The UFO Epithet

When the term “flying saucers” appears in print, or on television and in web-sites and blogs, it gets attention from the fringes of society – persons who are attracted to the idea of visitors from other worlds.

When the acronym UFO shows up, it attracts believers in strange things from the skies and even nay-sayers who, down-deep, think there is something to the UFO phenomenon but hate to admit it (for various reasons).

When we plug in a video at YouTube, and label it with the UFO mantle, it receives lots of views, and comments, pro and con.

If we leave out the UFO sobriquet, the visits and views are much less.

Thus, if one wants to attract visitors to a blog or a book or magazine, UFO should be in the title or heading.

Stuart Miller’s one-time “UFO Review” had a healthy following. His new magazine, “Alien Worlds” will very likely only attract cognoscenti, not that broad swath of readers who need to see UFO before they can get excited about what lies before them, in print, or on the internet, or on television.

UFO has become a symbol, resonating in ways that few other words or acronyms do.

It represents many things that stir the semi-conscious and unconscious of human beings.



It even has the power of a Jungian archetype that normally only exists in the collective unconscious, and requires a few hundred years to establish itself as a psychic symbol.

That a term, which represents a whole lot of bewildering appearances by an unknown thing or things, has become so fraught with psychological stimuli, is remarkable.

Not to capitalize on that powerful stimulation seems foolhardy and non-productive.

If one wants to move away from UFO to another term that is less tainted, such as unidentified aerial phenomena, they do so at the peril of losing a whole panoply of persons and mythical accretions that the term UFO provides.

Sure, science might take a look at the phenomenon if it were not encased with the UFO (and flying saucer) baggage, but then science would lose all the meaningful accoutrements that UFOs have garnered, which may provide the real clues for the solution to the mystery.

So, UFO needs to remain embedded in the consciousness of human beings, since that is what will ultimately decide the fate of the phenomenon, whatever that phenomenal fate may turn out to be.