Joseph Burkes MD 2023
In my judgment, the term “contactee” in many ways is outdated and inappropriate when it comes to those staging Human Initiated Contact Events (HICE) aka CE-5s. “Contactee” is somewhat pejorative because so much attention in the past has been focused on networks of experiencers called “contactee cults.”
For over 50 years, contactees have been forcefully criticized by the self-declared more “scientific” ufologists that have strived to appear more respectable. MUFON, with thousands of members, has been called the “nuts and bolts” wing of ufology. This is because they have focused on what is perceived as the “hardware” that are described in sighting reports. I question, however, the amount of “respectability” they have achieved when for decades flying saucer studies were deliberately marginalized by the mass media and the scientific establishment. Thankfully, this unfortunate situation has started to change since 2017 when videos taken by Navy pilots were released.
Although contactee new religions have been a consistent part of the flying saucer landscape, clearly not all contactees and their supporters are part of cults. Prominent contactees until the 1970s promoted their positive personal contact experiences as the focus of their educational programs. With the advent of the Peruvian contact group Rama in 1974 and the CE-5 Initiative in the 1990s, contactees have engaged UAP intelligences during fieldwork with multiple witnesses present. In effect, those that believe they are in contact with UFO intelligences have gone from being “contactees” to become volunteer “contact workers.”
It is important to note that words with “ee” endings suggest a passive role in English, as in “employee” or “payee.” The “er” or “or” endings suggest a more active role as in “worker”, “soldier”, “mentor.” For those that have ever joined a contact team, or have carried out contact protocols on their own, reaching out to the intelligence behind the UFO phenomenon can involve much mental, physical, and most importantly spiritual work. Thus, in my judgment, the designation “contact worker” is superior to the label “contactee.”
My choice of the term “worker” for contact activists is deliberately political. Work is the collective human activity that allows our civilization to exist. In our consumerist culture for many people however, this essential activity has been turned into a means to be able to “buy more stuff.” The daily activities of millions of working people are not celebrated in a mass media that focuses, in my judgment, too often on “the lifestyles of the rich and famous.”
Those that experience close contact with the phenomenon have often been divided into one of two camps. “Abductees” generally report negative experiences, while “contactees” report more favorable ones. The term “experiencer” is a more neutral term that has been introduced and includes both groups. “Experiencer”, despite its “er” ending, nonetheless, has a passive connotation. An experiencer is one that has an experience; it sort of just happens. The term says nothing about any attempt to influence or control the conditions of being contacted. It focuses on an individual’s experience and thus is highly subjective.
Collective contact work on the other hand involves multiple witnesses. This type of group setting potentially allows volunteer activists to corroborate each other’s experiences. Human Initiated Contact Events may also allow anomalous phenomena to be studied with the use of video cameras and other equipment such as tri-field meters that are deployed in the field prior to staging encounters.
As a former peace and social justice activist during the 1960s into the 1980s, I sense that “contact workers” might have the potential to become the nucleus for a new kind of social movement. It would have to be one based on the assumption that UAP intelligences are not only approachable, but also benevolent. Granted, these propositions are highly controversial. If UAP intelligences do have a helping mission, then it just might be possible for a radical social movement “to connect the dots.” I suggest this would involve linking the issue of contact with non-human intelligences, to possible solutions for many of the crises that confront humanity. I refer here to the challenges of global warming, poverty, war, racism, sexism and the obscene disparities of wealth and power that exist on our planet. If a potential for creating such a social movement truly exists, then it would logically follow that this would be an additional reason why the UAP phenomenon could threaten all terrestrial elites, but not the Earth’s people.
Contact experiencers often report a sense of mission concerning their encounters with non-human intelligences. Work in our highly divided class society is too often a thankless, boring, and poorly compensated chore. In contrast, when volunteer activists do “contact work”, they often experience it as an emotionally satisfying fulfillment of an important life mission. In the past, when I was actively doing fieldwork and was facilitating Human Initiated Contact Events, I experienced such volunteer activities as exhilarating. That sense of fulfillment is quite different from shouldering the “9 to 5” burden that is “work” for so many of us.
Carl Sagan in “Cosmos” 1980 Chapter 12 “Encyclopaedia Galactica”
“It is pointless to worry about the possible malevolent intentions of an advanced civilization with whom we might make contact. It is more likely that the mere fact they have survived so long means they have learned to live with themselves and others. Perhaps our fears about extraterrestrial contact are merely a projection of our own backwardness, an expression of our guilty conscience about our past history: the ravages that have been visited on civilizations only slightly more backward than we.” – Carl Sagan in “Cosmos” 1980 Chapter 12 “Encyclopaedia Galactica
For Additional blogs about the societal impact of a possible ET presence click on the links below.
This blog is a detailed analysis of the reasons for 75 years of denial of the reality of UFOs. Flying Saucers threaten our planet’s elites, but not the Earth’s people. https://contactunderground.wordpress.com/2022/07/05/an-et-presence-threatens-terrestrial-elites-but-not-our-planets-people/
https://contactunderground.wordpress.com/2021/12/22/the-leadership-crisis-in-ufology/
Contact Underground 