A Gift from the Goddess
"It is writing. It will change the world and everyone in it."
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There are few things more fascinating to me than the interactions between ancient peoples and what has manifested in our current technological age as unidentified flying objects. Unfortunately, the ancient astronaut hypothesis has been somewhat bastardized by the long-running TV series Ancient Aliens, and its producers' need to keep churning out content that inevitably becomes increasingly and untenably hyperbolic.
The popularity of the show has obviously drawn the attention of skeptical historians who dismiss it out of hand, with some even labeling it a justification for white supremacy by discrediting the origin of non-white civilizations.
There is validity to this concern based on the rhetoric used by some of the early proponents of this theory, and I myself am not convinced that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is the best explanation for this global phenomenon we've been experiencing over millennia.
However, there is a more abstract alternative theory regarding an ancient "intelligence" that has been guiding humanity on a specific path throughout our relatively short period of existence. This theory has little to do with biological beings from outside the solar system, though that may turn out to be one aspect. It is something far stranger and indigenous to Earth that keeps our species from veering too far off course.
The theory I'm referencing here is known as the control system hypothesis, and there may be signs throughout history of its influence on our limited perception of reality.
A Cultural Thermostat
The control system hypothesis was first introduced into the UFO zeitgeist by famed ufologist Jacques Vallée. Although it would bridge many explanatory gaps in existing theories, it was necessary for him to first consider the likelihood of more prevalent ideas in order to argue the superiority of his own.
As his influence on my own views might demonstrate, Vallée became skeptical of the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) after years of researching cases detailing interactions with UFOs and their alleged "alien" occupants.
In 1990, the lack of supporting data compelled Vallée to detail these inconsistencies in The Journal of Scientific Exploration, where he published a paper aptly titled Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects.
As the title suggests, Vallée puts forward his five major qualms with the consensus belief that aliens are zipping around in saucers and abductions are physical kidnappings of unsuspecting human victims.
Vallée defines the ETH as follows:
A majority of the public and the quasi-totality of the UFO researchers have supported the ETH. Under this hypothesis UFOs are physical devices controlled by intelligent beings from another planet who have been visiting the earth as part of a scientific survey begun at the time of World War II, very much in the fashion we ourselves plan to follow in exploring remote planetary environments.
In their interpretation of the phenomenon, this survey includes the reconnaissance of strategic sites, the gathering of mineral and plant samples and sophisticated interaction with the human and animal lifeforms present on the planet.
The recent interest in reported abductions of witnesses has contributed what many UFO researchers regard as convincing evidence that such extraterrestrial visitors are conducting a series of biological interventions designed to collect samples of human tissue and body fluids and are engaged in cross-breeding experiments for genetic purposes.
There is a very important point here made by Vallée, one that he posits is overlooked almost unanimously by both ufology and the general public.
The ETH appears to be very anthropocentric, and the descriptions of the activities witnessed by those interacting with this intelligence are most likely projections of what humans would do if we were in their position.
Vallée goes on to describe the five arguments that contradict the ETH, which includes the inconsistencies in sighting reports, the low probability of ETs evolving into a humanoid shape, the retention of memories following abduction, the interactions with beings that precede our technological age, and the apparitional shape-shifting qualities of the craft as described by witnesses.
Vallée then suggests three new hypotheses that could possibly solve for all these issues, based on his expertise in data analytics and the patterns he has found by crunching the numbers on countless cases over decades of research.
In my opinion, only one of these has stood the test of time, even up to this day.
He suggests a control system, first outlined by himself fifteen years earlier, may be an aspect of our world itself, keeping us on a physical and social trajectory through mechanisms of nature comparable to "terrestrial, ecological, and economic balancing."
To put it more simply and in my own words, a homeostasis of our shared reality.
Vallée, in his lauded 1975 book The Invisible College: What a Group of Scientists Has Discovered about UFO Influence on the Human Race referenced in his 1990 paper, introduces the control system hypothesis and expands on why it could be an adequate explanation for the intangible nature of the UFO phenomenon.
We have seen that the control system operates like a thermostat. It progresses by oscillations, drawing from the antagonism of fire and ice, warm and cold, evil and good, all myths for the feeble minds of men, equally bound by higher laws. For hot and cold are only relative to a mean, two appearances of a single fact, the motion of molecules. Few people have grasped both the physics and the beauty of it.
What is the variable being controlled in this control system? Thermostats control temperature; gyroscopes control the direction in which a rocket flies. What could a paranormal phenomenon control? I suggest that it is human belief that is being controlled and conditioned…
When I speak of a control system for planet earth I do not want my words to be misunderstood: I do not mean that some higher order of beings has locked us inside the constraints of a space-bound jail, closely monitored by psychic entities we might call angels or demons. I do not propose to redefine God. What I do mean is that mythology rules at a level of our social reality over which normal political and intellectual action has no real power. At that level, time frames are long, of the order of a century, and evolution is slow and sure.
The idea that mythology — and its accompanying worship of god-like entities — could be used to maintain control over populations on a massive scale has been irrefutably proven over millennia. Ideologies funneled through organized religion and the power structures required to maintain subservience are integral to our society.
You can see this in other human constructs like national borders, political parties, and even the rule of law. These are all ultimately fictitious concepts that govern our day-to-day existence regardless of whether we believe in them or not.
A few obvious questions ensue from this line of thinking.
How do we break out of this unbreakable paradigm?
What mechanism is keeping humanity from doing so?
And how did we get to this point in the first place?
Perhaps the origin of the control system may be found at the foundation of what makes us human.
Patterns of the Ancients
Tom DeLonge, the guitarist for Blink-182 and founder of To The Stars Academy, has some undeniable connections within the government, specifically with individuals who have had access to information related to the defense establishment's history with the UFO phenomenon.
His main objective with TTSA, besides the successful push to get Congressional UFO legislation passed, was to seed ideas into the public consciousness related to the phenomenon and spark interest in the potential implications such a paradigm shift would have on society.
When someone on Twitter asked him to spill the beans on what he knows about UFOs, he responded with a scenario loudly echoing Vallée's principal theory.
Ancient texts seem to have a common grouping of patterns that are all connected in intent to describe a control mechanism so different than what we would ever conclude. Don’t assume that ‘they’ are coming from other Planets; This is also where the conversation gets disturbing.
To reiterate, Tom is saying the various ancient texts from different cultures and religions, along with the mythology contained within them, may show a pattern of intent to control or shape humanity.
He apparently finds this so important that his company decided to devote resources to deciphering the connections between them, as he announces in a separate tweet.
To The Stars Academy is currently building the ability to ingest ancient (religious, philosophical) texts into our Artificial Intelligence technology. With this, we hope to find patterns that may have existed then and still do to this day.
With these two tweets taken together, we can infer that Tom is saying he wants to use AI to determine patterns that may lead us to an understanding of this control system as they are written in ancient texts. This seems like a realistic and noble endeavor in my opinion, and would be an objective way to look at this issue without fearing academic criticism.
If there is nothing to it, then we move on knowing all the better. But if there's something to it, the potential for new avenues of research and understanding of our history would be absolutely staggering.
However, understanding the control system might go even deeper than what we learn in those texts. If the words contained within them describe a mechanism that has guided humanity, then one must contemplate the contribution these texts themselves have had towards that same goal.
The Original Mechanism
Ancient texts themselves would be useless without the capacity to understand language and more specifically the written word. In fact, the only way to preserve and maintain consistency with any mythology, and therefore control, is through referencing the transcription of dogma that can be passed down physically for generations.
If these texts are in fact part of a control mechanism, then our ability to interpret their complex symbology — letters and numbers, as we know them today — would likely be as well.
Considering the strategy DeLonge envisioned with TTSA, he may have taken a page or two out of these scriptures by trying to influence social change through written language.
In the first chapter of their self-styled "informed fiction" book Sekret Machines: A Fire Within, DeLonge and his co-author AJ Hartley seem to suggest that written language itself was indeed "gifted" to humanity.
Set in 3216 BCE Sumeria, and from the perspective of a fifteen-year-old boy named Warrad-Murim, DeLonge and Hartley detail a "UFO" encounter involving all the people in his village. Preceding this sighting, the boy mentions a consensus of "divine discontent" permeating throughout the town's social consciousness.
It had begun an hour or more before the first cock; a great light had appeared without warning over the city. Warrad-Murim might have slept through it, but Amar had woken him to show him what the goats were doing. In fact they weren’t doing anything but standing in silence, unblinking and utterly motionless which, for creatures that were naturally both skittish and belligerent, was more than unusual.
It was as if they had stopped being goats and had turned into something else entirely, retaining only the shape of the animals. The light came in at every crack, reflected off every surface so that even the dim and shady stable seemed to glow. Nor was it the golden light of day, but a hard white radiance leaning to blue. The two boys had left the statue-like goats and gone outside, glad to get out from under the beasts’ blank, uncanny stare, shading their eyes against the light overhead.
The streets had filled with people all gazing upward, some of them praying to Inanna, some weeping, some even running to get away, though where they would go to escape such a thing, Warrad-Murim could not say. They had climbed to the highest point of the city, marveling at the way the light sparkled on the surface of the river, and it was as if the moon itself had swung low to inspect them.
I believe what DeLonge and Hartley are outlining here is a divine interpretation of the intelligence we now label as the UFO phenomenon. This visceral reaction among his people is not unlike the more recent incidents of similar societal significance such as the Miracle of Fátima.
However, the story doesn't end there. When another craft appears some distance away and Warrad-Murim's friend Amar runs to have a closer look, the boys encounter a stone tablet with unfathomable implications.
Around him, etched into the ground with the stick in his hand, were lines and symbols. Not the pictures they used to tell inventory but something else entirely, and as Warrad-Murim got closer, he saw that they mirrored the strange, fine carvings on the slab of stone.
“Amar?” he said, cautious and watchful. “What is this?”
Amar considered him and smiled.
“It is everything,” he said, and his face was full of something holy and exalted, as if he had indeed met the goddess and heard her truth. “Not just lists. It is all things on earth and in the heavens made usable, beautiful. It is people and trade and resources. It is story and worship. It is the end of error, of miscommunication. It is the prelude and avoidance of war. It is the stuff of peace, of love, of all things.”
Warrad-Murim shook his head, baffled, looking at the strange carved lines and symbols, many of them repeating, sometimes with variations. They spread out around the boy like a carpet. Hours of meticulous, bewildering work.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What is it?”
Amar smiled again, this time his usual, ordinary, boyish smile.
“Words,” he said. “Not pictures. Sounds.”
“How can you draw a sound?”
“Like this,” said Amar simply. “This,” he said, “is a gift from the goddess. It is writing. It will change the world and everyone in it.”
What DeLonge and Hartley are implying with this story is that the Sumerian transition in writing complexity from hieroglyphic ideograms to logosyllabic cuneiform was initiated by a "divine" intelligence that manifested in what today we would refer to as a UFO.
Details Matter
Taken to its logical conclusion, I would postulate that providing a society with written language is a way to establish and maintain control by preserving an infinitely more descriptive record of supernatural encounters with these god-like beings.
Traditions in their name can be passed down for generations with much less susceptibility to alterations of the original events, and it provides power structures the justification they need to stay in place.
The advancements in technology allowed by such detailed record-keeping could be exponential, as we've seen over the centuries since the dated age of the clay Sumerian tablets.
This milestone has been appreciated as the turning point in historical record-keeping, and the prevalence of gods throughout ancient texts from all over the world tells us that this phenomenon was not confined to Mesopotamia.
In summation, the control system itself could be written language to maintain a cultural trajectory based on very specific events that otherwise may have been lost to time had they been passed down verbally.
When these objects would appear demonstrating supernatural abilities — like performing angelic miracles or untold destruction — highly detailed records would be kept, providing for much more long-term changes in societal behavior based on stories that could be referenced and beliefs that could be reinforced whenever necessary.
Here's to hoping that TTSA or another organization with means can analyze ancient texts with AI to find patterns of a control system.
We just might realize what makes us human is what keeps us controlled.
Bro thats Genesis 11. Tower of Babel.
It talks about a unified humanity and then something came down and confused the languages.
Terrance McKenna also talked about language being a trap and needing to be changed.