“I can’t imagine how a far-flung “civilization” could do it.”
You need non-public technology to do it.
I have posted this link several times—these guys explain how the “magic” is done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t564HRXeS6o
Non public Technologies that help you keep secrets on a large scale:
—Memory wipes
—Cloning
—Brainwashing techniques
and the “hardest swallow” of all:
—Time travel/timeline alteration
These are alien technologies. The humans get the leftover junk that works OK but has flaws. That is why there are so many whistleblowers these days—the “good stuff” does not start failing after a while.
For many years I had a hard time accepting that time travel/timeline alteration was possible. Most of the theoretical arguments explaining how it would work made no sense at all to me—the “grandfather paradox” seemed impossible to overcome. (If you traveled to the past and killed your grandfather before you were born you could not exist to kill your grandfather....)
However the whistleblowers are claiming that tiny pieces of the timeline can be affected (including moving one individual back and forward in time without significantly affecting anything else). They are describing time as a highly complex web—not linear at all.
It sounds crazy the first few times you hear it—but it looks like it is really happening and we lack the theoretical framework to understand it.
When a bunch of highly intelligent folks (with no apparent ax to grind) start making “crazy” claims it is time to check our assumptions about what is real—rather than giving in to our first impulse—which is to call them liars and frauds.
Thx for that. Will watch that video...and, as said earlier, will hear what Richard Dolan has to say on the subject (I have a lot of respect for Dolan. He is very clear-headed on the subject).