None of this mattered to these people, who were having bladder-loosening epiphanies at the very sight of a light flickering above the horizon, only to slump into mild despair as the 'UFO' became a very Identifiable Flying Object. Dublin is a busy little airport, so it can be imagined how many times this sequence of events took place over four hours. They nearly went nuts whenever a lonely meteor streaked across the sky. At 10pm or so, a mildly despondent bunch of skywatchers slouched towards Raheny, to catch trains home. Still excited at having been out looking for UFOs, they seemed to accept that nothing fantastic had transpired. As I listened to my walkman on the train, it seemed that a war of the worlds fever had attacked Dublin, with the painfully irritating talk-radio presenter Chris Barry discussing anomalous sightings of *Venus*.

I thought I'd heard of the end of that night - it seemed agreed that the aliens had, once again, stood up the waiting fans. But some weeks later, when I bumped into one the Bull Island skywatchers, gone was the despondency of December 14th. The photographs of that night had been developed and lo! what had they accidently photographed? Some UFOs! I never got to see the photographs, but soon got wind that the skywatchers were generally regarding December 14th as a success, and that they *had* in fact seen some extra-terrestrial craft.

Despite it being my contention that December 14th was chosen especially because of its proximity to the meteor showers, I'm not of the opinion that these people deliberately decided to retrospectively turn what had been a ‘failure’ into a event of (perhaps) earth-shattering proportions. I think they quietly chose to remember that night as one of great personal importance, regardless of what ‘really’ happened… and regardless of what some sceptical hack thought he didn't see. After all, fabrication of the facts is always more difficult than telling the truth, if only because one has to remember the details of the lie. The truth is easier to remember. But if a person doesn't realise that they are fibbing, (even consciously - 'I'm just fleshing it out') how do they remember the line between truth and fiction? Does it matter?

Keeping the Bath-Monster Wet

Stuck as most of us seem to be, in the hell of Aristotelean logic, we can't help ourselves from throwing out the bath-monster with the bath-water. Just because a ‘reputable member of society’ claims something crazy, it doesn’t mean that the events they recollect actually occurred. And just because the measurable facts contradict the claims of someone, it doesn't follow that this person is a liar, or a lunatic. For them, the experience may have been very real. So we're left with:

1. What REALLY happened. If you believe in absolute objectivity. If nobody hears a tree falling on blue eyed polar bear taking a shit in the woods, did it really happen? Maybe.

2. What was REALLY experienced by the claimant.

3. What the claimant remembers, presumably based on point 2.

It’s truly a matter of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, but we have never been a species for turning down any chance of dissection and rampant reductionism.

While point 1. is possibly an absolute ideal, some aspects *are* measurable. For example, if someone reports having witnessed a UFO at a certain time and date, it’s relatively straightforward to check out the 'probable' causes and ask the sceptical questions: what was the weather like, were the heavens visible, were there any aircraft in the vicinity? Unless figures are fudged towards some desired result (subjectivity gets dragged in again), the facts should stand unsupported. Not being big on belief, I'm not sure I go for the idea of absolute objectivity, or the idea that any human being is capable of it. I think we're capable of objectivity *to a point*, which is probably in the form of subjectivity while taking other factors into consideration...

 

1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6