Addictive Ufologists

What one characteristic is typical of virtually all UFO enthusiasts?

Hoarding, collecting, accumulating UFO material or sightings.

Ufologists just have to get their hands on sightings released by government agencies; that welter of UFO sightings gathered from pilots, military people, and various other members of the population, the general citizenry.

And UFO devotees have to collect the plethora of books about UFOs that show up rather regularly, along with magazines, news-clippings, and web-pages or internet items.

What do UFO mavens or ufologists do with this collection of UFO detritus? Nothing – nothing at all.

They merely hoard it, sometimes giving it a cursory view.

Only a few use the collected material for research or as a supplement to hypothetical ratiocination.

The process of gathering such materials is a kind of addiction, a pathology that is endemic to the subject matter.

It’s not like coin collecting, or stamp collecting or baseball card collecting, which have a monetary value of some kind. It’s just a need to have a pile of stuff related to the UFO phenomenon, as if having it gives the collector a kind of authority just because of the ownership.

The UFO mystery has always attracted people with maladapted personalities.

That, in itself, is a matter for study, but no one with psychiatric or sociologic bona fides gives a good goddam.

And the hoarding is essentially harmless. But there it is…..

N.B. Click here for a news-clip on addiction