It’s been a minute since we featured a tale or two of high strangeness on this blog.
The work of bigfoot expert Bob Gymlan has been featured here before. As far as YouTubers go, Gymlan is refreshing for keeping an open mind and doing his homework. So I was delighted when a patron brought word of Bob Gymlan on The Joe Rogan Experience.
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You can watch the full episode here:
My comment:
Bob handily won the bigfoot mini-debate. Rogan ceded the intellectual high ground with his “No one I know has seen a sasquatch” dodge.
Gymlan could have played the pro-bigfoot trump card of “Scientists didn’t imagine the dermal ridge casts,” but he clearly wanted to be gracious.
And Joe frankly beclowned himself with those “Kodiak grizzlies and orcas are scarier than sasquatch” arguments. Gymlan’s informed opinion that bigfoot has human-level intellignce seemed to go over Rogan’s head. So what’s scarier: an 800-pound predator about as smart as a dog, or an 800-pound predator as smart as Ted Bundy?
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Joe must have sensed he was out of his depth on the sasquatch topic, so he did what he always does: start talking about drugs.
The push from some quarters to ascribe human intelligence to purely physical causes, and the desire of others to attribute consciousness to psychedelic drugs, both spring from the same common human need. Human beings are worshiping machines, and we inevitably credit creation to our gods, whether those gods take the form of personal deities, blind physical laws, or magic mushrooms. It’s almost like we were made for that purpose …
As for the alien question, we’ve been over that, too. One question “I want to believe!” school UFO buffs have never been able to answer is “If we’re being visited by an extraterrestrial race with technology advanced enough for interstellar travel, why isn’t their tech sufficiently advanced to hide all evidence that they’re here?”
TV-addicted members of the Baby Boomer through Y generations might say, “The aliens aren’t hiding it. The government is covering it up!”
But the natural follow up question is “If we’re being visited by an extraterrestrial race with technology advanced enough for interstellar travel, why isn’t their tech sufficiently advanced to keep our government from hiding their presence?”
It makes no sense either way to claim that the rulers of a Kardashev type 0 civilization could expose more advanced aliens that wanted to stay hidden or hide aliens that wanted to go public. So UFOs’ open secret status points to some kind of psyop–probably a diversion–perpetrated by the government, demons, or both.
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Now, to address the 800-pound gorilla in the room, Mr. Gymlan comes across as pretty based. Hearing him and Rogan brutally roast Stephen King was worth the price of admission by itself.
And I think it speaks to Bob’s awareness of his audience and himself that he’s hesitant to mention his fantasy novel. Just like Joe injecting his obsession with mind-altering substances into everything, shoehorning one’s spiritual affliction into one’s means of artistic expression is a shopworn meme. Still, Bob’s willingness to acknowledge the reality of spiritual being and the afterlife is an encouraging sign.
I like Bob, I thought he held his own on Rogan, and I’m praying for his healing. If you’re the praying kind, consider putting in a word with the Man Upstairs for him.
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