Are We About To Learn More About The Final Frontier? Probably Not
– By Ed Kociela –
I have never been much of a sci-fi fan.
Although some very talented writers have been purveyors of the genre, I always seem to lose interest in their plodding, overly complex, and repetitive storytelling. It’s usually verbose, usually haughty, and painfully redundant.
I mean, there aren’t many variations on the theme of bad-guy aliens swooping in to take over the planet by any means possible, including wiping out all human existence while in search of food, minerals and other substances vital to their survival; migration of their over-populated planet; or angry lifeforms looking for universal domination.
It all ends the same, with a firmly united planet Earth putting aside its political, religious, and cultural differences to combine forces to kill off the extraterrestrials for the good of humankind and entering a season of peace and brotherhood.
While I like the outcome, the truth is that there would be all sorts of deals being made between the invaders and various planetary governments who would gladly join them as long as they got a piece of the pie. Of course a lifeform with intelligence enough to navigate from deep space to Earth would easily figure that out and act accordingly. They would quickly learn that they can’t trust anybody, which is why I am not expecting much to come out of an unclassified report put together by United States intelligence agencies regarding unidentified aerial phenomena, the new term for UFOs. The report is supposed to be released to the public in June.
Nobody likes to hold secrets like the U.S. government, so the fact that this report will be unclassified means that, well, the information released to the public will be super-vanilla with few, if any, meaningful revelations. Oh, they will surely note that there have been some things observed and reported that they cannot explain, but that’s about as far as I expect it to go. I would pretty much think that it is a safe bet that even if they have images of alien carcasses or artifacts and technology salvaged from crashed air vehicles stored away at Area 51 in the Nevada desert or Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio – both alleged to house salvaged alien artifacts, from corpses to air vehicles and assorted technology – that information will not be disclosed.
The argument, as it has been for years, is that any proof of life existing beyond our planet would throw the religious, governmental, and cultural ideals and beliefs out the window, resulting in a certain chaos that could be impossible to control. Of course, we, as a nation, are in a continuing state of certain chaos that we cannot reel in, so I don’t know why there would be concern about such disclosures.
Certainly, however, that leaves us much to contemplate.
Using a statistical technique called the Bayesian inference, David Kipping, an assistant professor at Columbia’s Department of Astronomy, says there is a great likelihood that out there in the cosmos, the odds favor the belief that there is, indeed, common life out there, not to be confused with intelligent life. Of course, with the decline of mental stability, it is reasonable to investigate if, indeed, this big blue marble is inhabited by intelligent life. Nonetheless, as anybody who has ever placed a bet knows, the guys who set the odds are usually right.
The get out of jail free card for the government here is that it can bypass the truth by simply stating that whatever phenomena was sighted or reported was simply impossible to define, even though some pretty straight-arrow pilots have described such phenomena. We are talking credible, reliable, experienced military and commercial pilots and aircrews. That justification of withholding information if, indeed, they have proof of intergalactic visitors, would be rationalized because “the public just couldn’t handle it.”
All of this means that there will be a plethora of legitimate investigators and theorists, as well as the conspiracy buffs, with plenty of conjecture to offer, from the ridiculous to the sublime. The truth? Impossible to decipher. Besides, why let truth interfere with a good story.
I mean, is it really possible that somewhere out there on the edge of the universe somebody who looks, acts, and thinks exactly like you is reading this exact treatise at this precise moment in space and time? Does it mean that somewhere in the deep reaches of space there is a mirrored society with the same bias and beliefs? Or, does it mean that somewhere out there a highly evolved, more intelligent lifeform exists? I would like to believe the latter because we sure haven’t done much in the way of cultural development to make me hopeful if there is some like-minded civilization in a parallel universe. In fact, my bet is that if, indeed, extraterrestrials are among us, they are intelligent enough to understand that coming out would mean lynchings and cops pressing a knee to their neck until they expire as a harsh reality of the planet and that the natural prejudices here on good ol’ Earth could preclude any meaningful exchange. If Earthlings cannot peacefully coexist, what chance would extraterrestrials have should they decide to mingle?
The media has been slow to embrace this story, of course, for fear of getting entangled with society’s outliers and hucksters and I can understand that because would you be comfortable reporting on somebody who claims to have been abducted and taken aboard an alien spacecraft? It would most assuredly stretch their credibility, which is why, if you have been paying attention most reporting on this pending release from the government is mostly being covered with tongue-in-cheek and a nervous giggle. And, I can relate. I, for one, wouldn’t want my byline over a story about alien monkey babies from Mars.
Of course, with what we’ve been through and who has commanded the headlines these last five years, maybe we’ve already been writing about alien monkey babies from Mars.
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