Plutarch writing about the legendary Roman Leader Gaius Marcius (Caius Martius) Coriolanus a Roman general who is said to have lived in the 5th century BC, says this (according to David Bromwich in The New York Review of Books, July 11th, 2013, Page 55):
Coriolanus misfortune was “the authority of his nature, and his haughty, obstinate mind … the which of itself being hateful to the world, when it is joined to ambition, it groweth then much more churlish, fierce, and intolerable.” [From Mr. Bromwich’s review of the book, Ambition, a History: From Vice to Virtue by William Casey King,Yale University Press]
This tells us that Plutarch and King see ambition as a vice more than a virtue.
And in Ufology, ambition is a vice, as it corrupts the intended science that ufology parodies and pretends to practice.
The haughty, obstinate mind that Plutarch attributes to Coriolanus is a personal trait of some of the skeptics I’ve noted here, and it’s not an admirable trait, certainly, just a means to a self-defeating end.
Skeptics I know are churlish and intolerable, mean-spirited too, and often ill-educated.
But this resultant comes from ambition, a desire to succeed or look as if one is succeeding.
But ambitious behavior shows up in the arts and sciences more often than in the UFO community, maybe because the UFO community is flush with dolts who have no idea what the right ambitious path might be.
For instance, a clip I saw on the Arts channel, of Zino Francescatti, the great violonist [1902-1991] had him playing his instument at a violent clip, the music being “La Ronde des Lutins” a showpiece for violinists who want to display their prowess, rather than present the beauty from the strings of their instrument; that is, they make perverse the instrument in order to show off, La Ronde allowing them to be intolerable musically.
There’s a piece also, on Arts, by Misha Dichter, the noted pianist, whacking away at his instrument to produce the Precipitato movement of Prokofiev’s Sixth Piano Sonata.
(Don’t let the tuxedo fool you)
Mr. Dichter isn’t playing to please listeners and Prokofiev didn’t write the movement to please pianists or listeners either. Both were showing off.
Rap or hip-hop music isn’t intended to please the ear of listeners. The non-musical outpourings are vehicles for ambitious, success seeking performers, not artistic attempts to create harmonies to sooth the savage breast, rather to enrage the savage breast.
Contemporary painters/artists don’t paint to please the eyes of art aficionados. They paint to capture attention, by producing outrageously anti-beautiful pieces on canvas. Aesthetics be damned.
And in the UFO field, the ufological field (if I can use that term without cracking a smile), one finds similar barbaric thrusts, mostly from skeptics but also from avid believers in the extraterrestrial explanation for the UFO phenomenon.
The difference between UFO ETHers and skeptics is that skeptics are often (usually) churlish and fierce, whereas the “believers” are docile and sly, hoping to convince by stealth and subtle propagandistic technique.
One is Philistinistic and the other is Machiavellian, but with a subdued manner.
Ufologists aim to convince. Skeptics aim to deny. Both are ambitious and ineffective…because ambition is their misfortune, as Plutarch instructs his (future) readers.
Is it a wonder that UFOs are a laughingstock for rational beings?
RR
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