I don't know about you but that Agent Dana Scully on the Fox television series, X-Files is a babe. The actress, Gillian Anderson is okay but that Scully she
plays is da bomb! In more than one way. The best part about her (besides the obvious, ahem) is she accepts that the truth is out there but also accepts that we
ourselves may be that truth.
Now, X-Files is fiction. I'm not too far-gone to realize that (I think). But truth is stranger than fiction as the cliche' goes. There are people out there, right now,
listening for little green men. Sitting in tents with antennae sticking every which way, looking like a mutant sea urchin. These are not whackos. They are not
confused individuals with hopes of being like Jodie Foster. These people are Harvard grads.
MIT Scholars.
Government paid scientists.
Some of the planet's top minds.
These people are looking for ET and they don't even have an area code much less a phone card to make the call. Still they try. They try to make contact.
Why?
I'm a writer. Part of my genre is science fiction. As part of that club, I must adhere to the possibility of alien life out there. I do. I have never questioned, nor will
I ever question, the notion of non-human intelligence in the galactic void. It IS out there.
Way out there.
Way way out there.
In fact, the possibility of little blues and tall grays and all those almond eyed, spooky faced bugaboos stomping in, on or under this cute little planet of ours is
about the same as Al Gore buying a Hawaiian shirt. Zilch. I don't care how fancy a flying saucer you have you can't skip merrily along the universal highway
with ships the size we've supposedly gotten pictures of since the forties. Can't happen.
There are certain physical properties even stars in the cosmos must follow. What makes people think these tin foil spinning pie pans of spaceships can out
perform a star?
Well?
Can't think of a reason, huh?
Okay, I'll give you one... fire.
Yes, fire. Back in the caveman days, way before minimalls and slurpees, we had to eat our bigmacs raw. We had to eat cold pizza only because we had no
means to heat stuff. One day, a particularly stormy day per chance, a zot of lightning spanked an innocent tree and caused to burst into flame. A pizza guy was
on his way to deliver yet another cold pie when he felt the heat of the burning bush. The heat was so intense that the cheese on the pizza melted and caused a
distinct aroma. It was appealing to the pizza guy who started to put two and two together and WHAMO. Hot food.
Eventually everything was fire based. It was the latest fad. Far bigger than mammoth loincloths which was all the rage the previous winter. Suddenly though,
someone asked who came up with the idea. It turns out the pizza guy was not all that bright an individual and everyone refused to believe this simpleton could
create such a fantastic thing.
Then a man, dressed in black, said it must be the fire god. The light from above was a gift from the fire god. This seemed reasonable since no one on earth was
creative enough to come up with such an idea. And so the snowball saw a chance in the hell of human stupidity.
Think about it. Fire is a simple thing. Yet, the people of the time saw it as a magical thing that could only come from gods. Later, as history unfolded, people
found other things that only the gods could have created.
As the Greeks learned irrigation, their crops flourished. This was not because water could be moved to the plants and spread out to feed the greenery. The
growing harvests were the result of happy gods. Bad crops were punishments from the gods. Not human error.
As human intelligence grew and we learned that it was in fact us creating all these really cool things we also decided that the gods were not to blame or credit.
It was we. So we bumped off a lot of them. Except one. Too many people knew that everything around them was too perfect to be created by chance. There
had to be a higher being. This was widely accepted and life went on.
Languages were formed in detail. Nations were born. The world grew and grew. Minds expanded as well and soon a wellspring of information and discovery
began to flow. Life was improving.
But there was a problem. By now we had realized that God himself had pretty well left us alone to fend and grow. He would always be above, watching and
guiding but mostly would stay on the sidelines, like a coach. We also knew that everything we invented was a result of our own ingenuity. We discovered that
we are, on the whole, pretty damn clever people.
Centuries passed.
Imaginations grow with technology. Little squabbles about the existence of God come and go but for the most part we accept there is a superior being. A small
number of people though start to think otherwise. They think there is no God and the world is what we make it. They, however, have a problem also. It's a
fairly good-looking planet we have. We didn't create the planet so who or what did? Scientists began a quest to answer this problem. Their imaginations also
grow with technology.
Okay. Time for a pause. You're probably wondering where I'm going with this. If you've figured it out then very clever! You get a cookie. Oreo okay? Let's
help everyone else catch up.
We, through all our inventions, still cannot accept that we were the ones who created all these things. Only through gods or some higher being could these
wonderful inventions have arisen. We know fire came from a bolt of lightning. We know aqueducts came from our experiments with gravity and water flow.
We know the gear is just a series of teeth on a wheel pushing other teeth on a wheel in order to move stuff. We know we made all these things. We simply
could not believe we did it. We're only human.
We're not that clever are we?
Okay. Something smacks into the ground near Roswell, New Mexico. It hits the ground like a bolt of lightning. (!) Rumors of aliens begin. Suddenly we had the
answer. We knew God didn't create all these wonderful inventions that had been spilling from the cornucopia of technology. Since we humans were not clever
enough to invent the television, then aliens who were far more advanced, were the inventors.
This is not as far-fetched as you might think.
People all the time are talking about stuff being reverse engineered from alien technology. (Okay, maybe not all the time) We look at military things like the
stealth fighter or the blackbird sr-71 and go, wow. There is no way we made that in the 1960s. But we did. How the hell did we manage that?
We're not that clever.
The aliens made it. We know they made it because they had a flat tire in New Mexico back in 1943 and have been living here, working on a government
release program in exchange for microwave ovens and spaceshuttle tiles that are cool to the touch under all temperatures. Aliens. The Kathy Lee Gifford work
slaves of the U.S. Air Force. It figures.
But what aliens? Have you ever seen an alien? I haven't. And as far as the government covering them up... The U.S. Government hasn't been able to keep a
descent cover up since- well. Uh, they've NEVER been able to cover anything up. Kennedy, Laos, Watergate, Hoover, Area 51, nothing. The government
would be hard pressed to cover up a bowl of soup while microwaving it in order to prevent splash stains inside the oven.
So how are we hiding the aliens? Right. We aren't. There are no aliens on Earth. There are aliens in the universe but the universe is somewhat, well, spacious.
We may be able to see an alien in a telescope about seven hundred BILLION light years away. If we do see some aliens and if they see us and they decide to
come by and help us figure PI to the last digit, even if they left today, or yesterday. Hell, they could have left three million years ago and it still wouldn't be time
to make up the guest bedroom.
They're too far away. Hence they didn't have anything to do with the development of Earth. We developed this rock and we will continue to do so with our
own little minds. We don't need aliens or gods or anything to help build the next generation of DVD player. Gods and aliens are great for inspiration but not big
on technical manuals.
What I'm saying here is that when you do something that is by and large a brilliant thing, take credit. YOU did it. Too many times do people thank their agent
and their parents and God and such for their success. These elements are important yes but they are just that. Inspirations. YOU did the work, YOU did the
thinking, YOU did it. Congratulations, come get your award.
The theory that everything from fire to gears to invisible aircraft being brought to us by aliens from far beyond is actually accepted in corners of this world. The
people who accept them are the ones who don't believe in their own abilities to create. The sit in awe of what other humans have done and think, "How to they
get that human skin over the alien form? Clearly that person is and alien."
The film Men in Black depicts this wonderfully. We think of it as a joke. Many others actually believe it. To them I say one thing:
Hmmm.
That's it. All I can do is look at them and wonder. I wonder two things.
One, I wonder if there is a chance at showing them the light. Showing them that WE are the creative forces behind the human race. I wonder if I can convince
them, like Scully to Mulder, that just because something is mysterious, it doesn't mean everything has an alien twist to it.
The second thing I wonder is if they are indeed the ones who are correct. Maybe the truth IS out there instead of "in here". Maybe there are aliens all over the
place and we just accept them without quandary or question.
In either case though, that Dana Scully is STILL a babe.