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Lesley

Grey Matter

Lesley is also a columnist for UFO Magazine. Check it out !

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4.14.10

Sean David Morton, Ufology, the Media and Karma

Once again, I have been thinking -- damn me! It all started with the Sean David Morton indictment, which caused me to write this post at UFO Mystic. It just occurred to me, by reading the Inside Edition article and watching the video, that Ufology and the esoteric can't be blamed if people insist on being stupid and not doing any investigation. This was the part that really irritated the crap out of me:

Carole Dunn saw Morton speak at a new age conference in New York City. The 64 year-old invested most of her life savings, 20,000 dollars, with Morton.

Really all it takes is a Google search to find out that SDM is a fraud, but apparently Carole didn't even bother to do that. As I said at UFO Mystic, I hate to blame the victim, but she does deserve some of the blame. I don't know what to think of someone that would see SDM speak at a conference, know nothing more about him than that, and hand over most of their life savings to him. Yet somehow Ufology and the esoteric will be blamed for SDM and Carole losing her money, but I bet almost nobody will step up and say that Carole holds at least some blame in this matter. I am just going to be bold and say that a LOT of it was Carole's own fault and that predators like SDM count on people not even bothering to spend 2 minutes doing a Google search or any other type of research before handing their money over to him.

Well, I am tired of Ufology and the esoteric being blamed for frauds like Morton. The information is out there -- we can't force people to actually bother to look for it and read it. I am tired of having to apologize for these types of things -- people have some responsibility to actually look into these matters for themselves. I don't care whether you are giving SDM $20,000 or just buying a $20 book or DVD, the information is out there, if people would only bother to look. Sometimes there may be conflicting information, for a $20 book you can take that chance, but not with your life savings. It is simply not Ufology's fault when people don't bother to look into the information that is out there.

This all works into the whole idea that the media and others don't take Ufology serious because of the frauds and nuts. No, the media and the others don't take Ufology seriously because they are too lazy to do any actual research into it. They somehow manage to wade through the information on every other subject, including science, but with Ufology they don't even bother and that is their fault, not ours. There are supposed to be reporters that actually dig into and research subjects -- I have seen very little of that in the media, if any.

Why do so many people in Ufology care about the media anyway? These are the same people that helped beat war drums for Bush over "weapons of mass-destruction" in Iraq. They didn't even look thoroughly into that, let alone something like Ufology. Frankly, I don't even believe that most of them deserve the respect they are given, there are very few, real reporters among them. Most of them are just partisan talking heads and just about anyone can do that job. Yep, including me.

As for the public, if they were truly interested they could do the same, but they don't. They either believe or disbelieve what they hear on TV or radio or wherever, but very few actually spend the time to research and decide for themselves. So we can all type away on our blog posts (or whatever else) about who is shameful, a hoaxer or a fraud in Ufology. Yes, they will be added to the dozens (or maybe more) that already exist about the same subject or person, but it is unlikely to save anyone from being fooled or ripped off because they are unlikely to even bother to look. OK, maybe a couple actually bother to look, but it is really not worth the effort that so many in Ufology put into it, since most of it is already out there somewhere. Also, people actually smart enough to research would be unlikely to give SDM their money, even if they could find only good things written about him because most times, in most situations, it is that obvious. As almost everyone knows -- if something sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

I remember having a conversation with a Buddhist friend of mine once and I was complaining about how someone we knew was doing something so stupid and they were going to end up deeply regretting it. She told me, that is their path, there is something they are suppose to learn there or a deeper reason. I am not saying for certain she was right, but maybe people do have paths and maybe if you give your life's savings to Sean David Morton and lose it all there is a reason. I am certain that you would learn a grand lesson from that and be pretty unlikely to repeat it. Basically, we all have suffering in our lives, some of it brought on by ourselves and some of it unavoidable. Since I do know that to be true and I also believe in Karma -- I would much rather be one of the people that lost my money than be Sean David Morton, himself, even if he doesn't go to prison.

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