The Project Avalon Community Forum - The Unexplained https://projectavalon.net/forum4/ en Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:57:51 GMT vBulletin 30 https://projectavalon.net/forum4/images/misc/rss.png The Project Avalon Community Forum - The Unexplained https://projectavalon.net/forum4/ Why we need Mystery https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?131560-Why-we-need-Mystery&goto=newpost Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:17:42 GMT Below is a new and thought-provoking presentation from Richard Dolan, which inspired a host of thoughts of my own. His stated thesis wasn't exactly the title of this thread, but it's possible he might not disagree.

Richard has made many long strides in recent years, but in some ways he's still at least a little constrained by western academic (logical, Cartesian*) thinking.
* Cartesian thinking is a logical, step-by-step approach to knowledge based on radical doubt, reason, and the separation of mind and matter. Named after the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, it seeks absolute certainty by breaking complex problems down into smaller, simpler parts.
But his presentation, clearly well-prepared but unscripted and highly fluent and articulate, omits one analogy that seems obvious to me: that of the exploration of new lands.

There was almost limitless scope for that in our world even up to 120 years ago. But now almost every square inch of Planet Earth has been visited and mapped.

What has this lost us?

But of course, expanding into the wider universe, scope for the exploration of new worlds is almost infinite. And let's be infinitely thankful for that. Mystery, and unanswered questions, will always be there. And that's surely such a healthy thing for any intelligent species to experience.

Of course, Richard (on his channel) is largely confining the issue of 'Mystery' to the UFO phenomenon. But even though our physical world is almost completely explored and mapped, there are other non-physical mysteries in abundance, many of which are documents on the Avalon forum.

And it's possible that we may not ever get to understand everything.
.
Richard himself gives a wonderful example of exactly this from Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay Circles.

https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-first-series/circles.

Emerson's analogy to our world of established knowledge and understanding is simple and brilliant. If our understanding is represented by a circle, then the circumference of that circle is the interface between what's understood and what is not.

And therefore when the circle expands... so does the circumference, the interface with the unknown.
After a Lifetime of Mystery, What Remains?


Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpLzeyAGAQ
]]> The Unexplained Bill Ryan https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?131560-Why-we-need-Mystery