Jacques F. Vallée

“Human actions are based on imagination, belief, and faith, not on objective observation – as military and political experts know well. Even science, which claims its methods and theories are rationally developed, is shaped by emotion and fancy, or by fear. And to control human imagination is to shape mankind's collective destiny.

Beyond the question of the physical nature of the UFOs, it is imperative that we study the deeper problem of their impact on our imagination and culture. How the UFO phenomena will affect, in the long run, our views about science, about religion, about the exploration of space, is impossible to measure. But the phenomenon does appear to have a real effect. And a peculiar feature of this mechanism is that it affects equally those who "believe" and those who oppose its reality in a physical sense.

For the time being, the observation can be made that it is possible to make large sections of any population believe in the existence of supernatural races, in the possibility of flying machines, in the plurality of inhabited worlds, by exposing them to a few carefully engineered scenes the details of which are adapted to the culture and symbols of a particular time and place.

Could the meetings with UFO entities be designed to control our beliefs? Consider their changing character. In the United States, they appear as science fiction monsters. In South America, they are sanguinary and quick to get into a fight. In France, they behave like rational, Cartesian, peace-loving tourists. The Irish Gentry, if we believe its spokesmen, was an aristocratic race organized somewhat like a religious-military order. The airship pilots were strongly individualistic characters with all the features of the American farmer.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact