Strange Invaders

        There has been a flurry of articles in recent months featuring persons who served in the U.S. military or held high level positions in the U.S. government and who have publicly declared that they believe UFOs (unidentified flying objects) are real.  Last October for example, there was an article in the Huffington Post (“Inside Knowledge About Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Could Lead to World-Changing Technology”, October 19) describing the official launch of a new organization called “To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences”, which is dedicated to researching unexplained phenomena and developing new technologies inspired by some of these encounters.  What is interesting about that organization is that its founders include, according to the article, “a 25-year veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations; a Lockheed Martin Program Director for Advanced Systems at ‘Skunk Works’; a former deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; a DoD Senior Intelligence officer who, among other sensitive responsibilities, ran a Pentagon aerospace ‘threat identification’ program focusing on unidentified aerial technologies.”  Luiz Elizando, the Pentagon officer, is quite unequivocal in stating his conviction that UFOs are real, based upon the evidence he had studied while working there.  Stephen Justice, the Lockheed Martin executive and an aerospace engineer, hopes to develop new technologies based upon described or recorded sightings of UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena).   And it was also reported in the news that a former U.S. Navy pilot, Commander David Fravor, came out publicly to describe an encounter that he had with a UFO fifteen years ago while flying a jet.  He had actually been inspired to speak out because of a recent news story about the Pentagon acknowledging that it had funded a project called the “Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program” from 2007-2012.

© 2017 Stephen Justice

A TTS Academy concept for a vehicle drawn by Stephen Justice, embodying the technology they seek to understand and develop - a visionary concept for a revolutionary electromagnetic vehicle based on technology observed in unidentified aerial phenomena

        Now I should say at this point that I have always had a healthy skepticism about UFOs and other popular beliefs that seem to be inspired more by science fiction than actual experiences, because so many of these have either been exposed as hoaxes (e.g., the famous Loch Ness monster photograph and the film footage of a Sasquatch) or provided with more rational explanations.  (Just recently, supposed evidences of the famous “abominable snowman” which had been preserved for decades, such as hair samples and even a thigh bone, were shown through DNA analysis to actually all have come from local species of bears.)  And I have seen, over the years, some very plausible and convincing takedowns of the most hallowed of these legends, such as the Bermuda triangle, the Roswell crash, and the military’s secret “Hangar 18”.  The particular problem with UFOs, to me, is the “close encounter” stories.  As a friend of mine once joked, it is hard to believe that visitors from an advanced civilization would travel over vast distances of many light-years, and, upon reaching Earth, choose to make their first contact with the town drunk.  And yet now, apparently, a number of believable and respectable people are declaring that UFOs are real, and must be taken seriously.

        These people also seem to be implying that the UFOs are doing more than making exploratory contacts: the craft and their operators actually seem to have been here for a while, engaged in some activity other than just looking around.  What is it that they are after?  Our long and rich history of science fiction books and movies have given us plenty of tantalizing possibilities.  If all living beings in the universe are similar to those on planet earth, at least in their chemical composition, then water is probably a vital resource to them, and the earth, with three-fourths of its surface covered by water, would be a perfect extraterrestrial source for a fresh supply.  Or it could simply be the entire earth itself that is desired, as “living space” for beings that have overpopulated their own world.  Perhaps earth’s living creatures (including human beings) are what has attracted them, as a food source.  Or human beings might be seen to be potentially suitable as intelligent slaves, serving a master alien race.  All of these possibilities have been explored in science fiction.  Some movies have even raised the possibility that it is women in particular that these alien invaders want (the 1967 film Mars Needs Women, for example, and, in a lighter vein, the 1988 film Earth Girls Are Easy).

Yvonne Craig and an admirer in Mars Needs Women

        I sense, however, that based upon their contacts with UFOS – either directly or through studying cases – the military and government personnel who accept their existence, such as the individuals mentioned above, do not believe that they are an imminent threat.  Their reasoning is that, with the clearly superior technology at the disposal of whoever are piloting these craft, if invasion or destruction was the motive, then it could have easily been done already.  This presents another tantalizing possibility that has found its way into science fiction, such as the classic movie The Day the Earth Stood Still: that an advanced civilization has discovered that our own civilization has reached a stage of development where it is capable of destroying itself, and perhaps even destroying other worlds, and so is being watched with great consternation.  In this case, the alien race might be prepared to stage an intervention – perhaps a catastrophic one – if we demonstrate that we are unable to rationally manage the destructive forces under our control.  A somewhat more benign version of the alien guardian motif is that which envisions a race of extraterrestrials actually guiding and perhaps even accelerating our evolution, as in the other classic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

        The outcomes, then, of alien contact have been catalogued thoroughly by science fiction writers, who have left no stone unturned in exploring the possible motives of these visitors.  While probably benevolent, though possibly not, I think that in either case a genuine, publicly acknowledged contact would be disruptive, in perhaps extremely unsettling ways.  Because such a contact would undermine core beliefs and assumptions that just about every human culture has held about itself since their very beginnings.

        Our existence as intelligent beings on this planet has been in a vacuum.  That is to say, for as long as we have collectively remembered our time on this earth, we have been alone.  There have been no other intelligent beings beside us.  (There is compelling scientific evidence, of course, that certain other big-brained species, such as whales, dolphins, and elephants, possess a high degree of intelligence, but because their brand of intelligence has not enabled them to produce any of the hallmarks of civilization, they have generally been regarded as little more than clever animals by the general human populace.)  Perhaps, when Homo Sapiens were first establishing themselves on this planet, there were other, closely related, hominid species that also had intelligence which rivalled our own.  They may have even had the power of speech, and the ability to make fire, tools, and weapons.  But if so, they have long been blotted from our memory, and if not entirely, then they survive only in those archetypal fears and hatreds that we seem to have toward goblins and monsters that resemble human beings in superficial ways, and in those humanoid monsters that populate science fiction novels and movies.

        As a consequence of this, our religions, mythologies, creation epics, and apocalypses have all tended to have been centered on a core belief that humanity has a unique relationship with the Creator of all things, and that this unique relationship will somehow play out in the destiny of the universe.  There is no room in most of these religions and mythologies for other worlds, with other created beings – particularly intelligent ones.  We alone are the special creation of God, and it is in the playing out of our destiny that God’s plan for the universe will be completed.

        Granted, some religious traditions are more intransigent about this than others.  Eastern religions, for example, seem much less inclined to focus upon a unique, special relationship between the Creator and humanity.  Many of the deities and supernatural entities among these religions are non-human, and their existences span across many worlds and long stretches of time.  In the Tibetan Buddhist work The Fortunate Aeon, for example, the life spans of some of the bodhisattvas (Buddhist saints) that are chronicled span thousands, if not millions, of years, and clearly suggest existences that extend beyond earthly civilization.  In Hindu and Buddhist texts, there are frequent references to other worlds.  Hence, the announcement that one of these worlds had contacted our own would probably not be as catastrophic as it would be among those religions more prevalent in the West: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

        In these three religions, the special relationship between God and humanity is paramount, and the idea that a relationship rivaling this one exists in some other area of the universe would probably be regarded among their followers as blasphemous.  God created “the World”, and then God created “Man”, and everything else in the story of creation follows from this.  Let us look at how contact with an otherworldly civilization might undermine the central tenets of these religions.

        In Judaism, after the Creation story, and the various calamities that befall a regularly recalcitrant humanity, God establishes a special covenant with the Jewish people after Moses leads them out of captivity in Egypt.  This covenant, with its associated code of moral conduct, is subsequently interpreted as binding upon the people Israel in order to enable them to fulfill their mission of bringing God’s creation back to God.  But if there are other worlds, with other intelligent beings populating them, then what is the real nature of this covenant?  Do none of these other intelligent beings have their own special relationship with the Creator?  And if they do, then how did this come about?  Did each of their planets also begin with a Garden of Eden, followed by a “Fall” of the primordial created being, followed by a special revelation experience to one of its successors?  If not, does this mean that the task of Judaism will be to bring the intelligent inhabitants of all worlds back to the Creator?  What if there are more than one of these worlds?  What if there are uncountably many?

                Believers in Christianity face the same conundrum.  The fundamental tenet of Christianity is that a messiah, Jesus, who has a unique and special relationship with the Creator – in fact shares an identity with the Creator through the mystery of the Trinity – came to earth as an intercessor for humanity, and in sacrificing his life made it possible for humanity to find redemption after the fall of Adam.  If there are other intelligent species in the universe, then is this Jesus their redeemer as well?  Do they even need one?  If so, does this mean that they had their own “fall from grace” experience and expulsion from an alien equivalent of the Garden of Eden?  And if this happens to every race of intelligent beings brought into existence by the Creator, doesn’t this imply that, rather than being a willful sin, it is an inevitable outcome of their design?  If this is true, and it is an inescapable “design flaw” of created intelligent beings, where, then, would be the sin?  Even granting that it is a sin, will these aliens need to somehow learn of Earth’s Jesus – through interstellar contact – to find their own salvation?  Or does every intelligent species have its own visitation of an incarnation of God?  If this is the case, then is it even correct to talk about a “Holy Trinity” (i.e., God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit), if there are multiple incarnations of a divine redeemer, perhaps inhabiting life forms entirely different from human beings?  This would seem to resemble more a Hindu conception of the godhead, with God appearing in the guise of various diverse entities.

        There is a potentially greater trauma than merely finding out that our own religious beliefs that are contingent on a special relationship with the Creator are undermined by alien contact.  Looking at the history of colonization of the New World (and colonialism in other parts of the world) by Christian Europeans, we see a determined effort by the colonizers and conquerors to convert the natives to their own religious faith, because these invaders were convinced that their own beliefs were superior to those of the natives.  Their reasoning seemed sound enough:  Their science and their military might were superior to those of the indigenous inhabitants, and therefore it logically followed that their beliefs – about everything – must be more correct.  These religious conversions were often forced, and often brutally so.  If a technologically advanced alien race came upon our civilization, would they reach the same conclusion?  Would they compel us to give up our “primitive” ideas about religion and adopt instead their own metaphysical views?  Of course, the mere encounter with such beings would probably be enough to cause many in our civilization to abandon their religious beliefs, particularly if they could see no reflection of their tenets of faith in the beliefs and customs of this more advanced alien race.  Hence, even a non-violent, non-oppressive encounter by alien visitors will be traumatic enough.  If they intervened, even in a benevolent way, to end our wars, political oppressions, poverty, and dangers of technology run amok, this could actually be more traumatic, because as terrible and seemingly unsurmountable as these problems and challenges are, they were our problems to grapple with.  When I think of this, it brings to mind a scene in the 1976 King Kong film, after the giant ape is captured and is about to be taken off of the island.  The character of Jack Prescott, played by the actor Jeff Bridges, declares, “He was the terror, the mystery of their lives, and the magic. A year from now that will be an island full of burnt-out drunks. When we took Kong we kidnapped their god.”  There have certainly been many vibrant native cultures in America and elsewhere that were relegated – partially or completely – to that condition after contact with the civilization and religions of Europe.

It is ironic, then, that perhaps the most toxic and disruptive alien contact of all would come about through benign intervention, and even more so if it involved some sort of coercion.  This, of course, is also a staple of science fiction, probably most memorably in the above-mentioned movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which the alien, Klaatu, after demonstrating his capability of literally shutting down the machinery of Earth’s civilization, warns the multitude that has assembled around his spacecraft, “Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration.”  Such an extreme intervention, particularly if it occurred to prevent a globally devastating war, or extreme and irreversible environmental degradation, would represent a stark reality for humankind: that it was ultimately incapable of saving itself and following a course that led to a benign and sustainable future.  This would shatter what is probably one of the most fundamental tenets of our collective belief about ourselves: that we are in control of our own destiny, and (perhaps with the help of a benevolent Creator), we will ultimately steer our course of destiny to a higher plane.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

As I described in earlier blogs (“A Handful of Dust”, May 27, 2015, and “The Final Call”, August 24, 2016), a fundamental part of our psychological character is the belief that we are the authors of our own stories: as individuals, as nations, and collectively as a civilization.  We need to believe that there is something special about that story, unique to us, and that we are somehow playing a pivotal role in its shaping and ultimate outcome.  This is obviously true among the Western religions, but it is not limited to these, and it is not even limited to the religious in general.  It is certainly not just a feature of the ignorant or the shallow-minded.  The great 20^th-century writer Thomas Mann, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, expressed this very idea in the following words:

Deep down, I believe – and deem such belief natural to every human soul – that in the universe prime significance must be attributed to this earth of ours.  Deep down I believe that creation of the universe out of nothingness and of life out of inorganic state ultimately aimed at the creation of man.  I believe that man is meant as a great experiment whose possible failure of man’s own guilt would be paramount to the failure of creation itself.

Whether this belief be true or not, man would be well advised if he behaved as though it were.

[From “Life Grows in the Soil of Time”, in the anthology This I Believe, edited by Edward P. Morgan, 1952]

If this “great experiment”, as Thomas Mann calls it, were to be interrupted or halted, even for benign reasons, my greatest fear is that it would leave us irremediably traumatized, disoriented, and dispirited.  Of course, it is a hollow consolation to look back upon the catastrophic horrors that occurred during the global wars, mass murders, and tyrannies of the past century, and see this as evidence that perhaps these non-human intelligences, if they do exist, are indeed practicing a resolute policy of non-intervention.  It suggests that only when we bring ourselves to the brink of general self-destruction will we learn if such intelligences have actually been there all along, waiting in the wings – to save us, or to replace us.  By then, of course, it will make little difference one way or the other.  In either case, a permanent destruction of our civilization as we know it will have occurred: either by our own hand, or through the actions of the reluctant intervenors.  Let us hope that we never reach that point, having long before then taken Thomas Mann’s words to heart: behaving as though we are part of a unique “great experiment” of universal importance, and bringing it to a successful culmination.  Perhaps then, and only then, will we be able to meet and commune with any neighbors that might exist beyond the confines of this planet, and do so with no risk of losing what we have deemed to be special and unique about our collective identity, history, and purpose.