Contact: Falling Short of Expectations
Contact has become both a cliché and a durable cultural icon. The concept is embodied in many cartoons, movies and the like with aliens respectfully asking, “Take me to your leader”. Our presumably lonely sojourn on this planet has led to a great deal of daydreaming and speculation on the subject. There have been, movies, TV programs, fiction books and speculative essays written about contact. Then there are those other stories where contact results in a much less healthy experience for we humans.
Even UFO debunker Carl Sagan took a stab with his novel “Contact”, which was later made into a movie. Sagan was very active in the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) program as well as his involvement with many of our unmanned space exploration missions. It was perhaps inevitable that his book chose the SETI route to contact. As a conservative scientist, the speed of light had to be considered as a limitation – so no itinerant aliens traversing the cosmos in spaceships for him.
Then we have our credulous friends in the Exopolitics movement. They are so wrapped up in the concept of contact, that they busy themselves fabricating myths and protocols based on channeled teachings, anonymous alien messages and lord knows what other wacky stuff. Hey, if you work in a vacuum you can fill it with whatever crap you like. Sagan did it too. And let’s not forget those frequently maligned folks, the Contactees.
There is fodder here for scientists, UFOlogists, fantasists and realists alike. The theme of contact extends straight across multiple interests, studies and belief systems. In its breadth, it is a true Jungian archetype.
Did Star Trek Get It Wrong?
For me, the most interesting element of our contact myths is what these speculations say about the human psyche. Aside from those cheesy saucer invasion flicks, where death, destruction and mayhem are the order of the day, most contact scenarios revolve around an exchange and communication based on curiosity and attempted connection, if not on relative equality. And the “others” are usually depicted as relatively comprehensible beings somewhat like us. This is perhaps best exemplified by the TV series “Star Trek” with its “prime directive” and lively exchanges between humans and aliens who mostly seem like quirky or cantankerous neighbors. You know, like folks in your own neighborhood.
Star Trek also clinged to popular sentiment about human virtue and superiority. The show portrayed our altruism projected out into the universe where, in typical American fashion, we become the self-appointed policemen in a fractious and morally challenged universe. Certainly this is myth in every sense of that word.
Our history has recorded an ongoing relationship with entities, from the sky, the sea and even from seemingly "nowhere" at all. Our cultural myths, religious texts and histories are replete with tales of contact. Perhaps we do not usually acknowledge this because we humans have invariably seemed but mere tools in these exchanges. The contacts only happen on their terms. They invariably show the “others” as superior to us spiritually, technologically and intellectually.
But this runs counter to our instinctive self-aggrandizement. For instance, it is difficult to imagine Captain Kirk trading macho posturing banter with Whitley Strieber’s ontologically elusive grays. In fact, I imagine that once Kirk cleans the mess out of his shorts, the grays would more likely be reading him the riot act. This is not the way the story was supposed to go. Kirk is out of his element. We are boldly going nowhere but straight down Alice’s discomfiting rabbit hole. For us the primary product of contact has been mystification. That is not the egalitarian contact of our popular myths – where is the foregone acknowledgement of our sentience? Kirk is irrelevant without at least token respect from the other guys.
I Got Your Contact, Right Here
First contact has already happened. To suggest that we have not been contacted is to discard the idea of UFOs altogether. Either “they” have already shown themselves - repeatedly - or UFOs are only fairy tales just as the debunkers suggest. And that is not all. Religious texts and cultural myths equally show a rich tapestry of contact. Even if you do not equate “Chariots of the Gods” with UFOs, those stories are, unequivocally, about human contact with “others” of mysterious origin. How is that not contact? Several of our primary religions are based on such contact.
If you follow those myths far enough, we could be the ultimate result of earlier contacts. The late Zecharia Sitchin’s book, “There Were Giants Upon the Earth” was his parting shot to the ancient alien mythos. In it he claims that the smoking gun for historical alien contact, and perhaps even human origins, may be residing in the British Natural History Museum in London. He offers some pretty compelling evidence for this. Too bad it will probably take an act of god himself to get the stuffed shirts at the museum to do some DNA testing and satisfy our curiosity. But then that has the potential to upset more apple carts than just contact myths alone.
Paleoanthropologists continue to believe there will be Darwinist confirmation in the form of a missing link between man and ancient apes. It seems every time they discover new examples of "proto-humans”, rather than clearly showing linkages with our assumed primitive ancestors, the family tree only becomes more convoluted with detours and dead-end cutoffs that fail to support long-held notions of direct linear descent.
Perhaps the "missing link" is not anything from this earth. Many religious texts and cultural myths take this position, if we read them with an open mind. They suggest we are products of ancient proto-humans and other beings implicitly superior to us. That could explain the lack of an "intermediate" link because, technically speaking, WE are the intermediate form - and the more evolved form is somewhere out there.
This master/human, God/man, alien/specimen, creator/created relationship is reflected in so many of our cultural, UFOlogical and religious myths that it is unnecessary to enumerate them. Clearly, those referred to as "gods" are invariably seen as superior beings, and we as their humble servants. Perhaps this ongoing unequal historical relationship suggests a cause for our subconscious human feelings of inferiority. Subliminal feelings of unworthiness could fuel those ego-inflating cultural myths revolving around human superiority. That could also explain our, almost needy, concepts around contact.
Contact From the 'Other' Perspective
So if we have already experienced contact, then why don’t they land and make themselves known to us? Isn’t that the essence of our popular myths around contact? If we propose the UFO as a representative for the other, then why do we get no respect?
Contactee George King who founded the Aetherius Society, claimed to have received an explanation for this in 1956:
“I ask my brothers from Terra who require as a sign a landing of one of our craft in a prominent position, to give us a sign. What sign do we require?
"Their goodwill, their complete open minded honesty and their proof that if we reveal to them the secrets of the vibrations of crystals, these secrets will be used for the benefit of all. We would only be instrumental in taking Terra back another 70 decades if we gave the secrets of our gravitational control to you now. Would it benefit the ordinary man? It would not. It would be used for belligerent purposes, a belligerence which would be covered by the camouflage of defense. Then science know this: when you give unto us a sign, then will we give unto you a sign, the sign which you now require. This will be accepted as the measure of your goodwill."
Apart from the smarmy language, it is hard to argue that this statement is not an accurate appraisal. It is indisputable that our number one priority for advanced technology is for military purposes. This draconian impulse no doubt has served to conceal much present technology from the world at large under the guise of “national security”. That paradoxical euphemism is actually a fig leaf to conceal our fundamental insecurity. And if we weren’t so jumpy and impulsive, perhaps there would be no reason for concerns about “national security” at all.
In a different vein, a contact case from the 1960s included a statement that might provide further insight. On December 3, 1967, Ashland Nebraska Police Sergeant, Herbert Schirmer encountered a UFO at a rural crossroad where he experienced missing time. Under hypnosis he detailed an encounter with alien beings that took him on a tour of their ship and told him many things, including this:
“They have been observing us for a long period of time and they think that if they slowly, slowly put out reports and have their contacts state the truth it will help them. He is explaining that to a certain extent that they want to puzzle people. They know they are being seen too frequently and they are trying to confuse the public’s mind.”Hey, mission accomplished! We have lots of confusion but not much illumination.
Yeah, Thanks Captain Buzz-kill
Yeah, I know. That is not the kind of contact we hope for. It mostly leaves us scratching our heads. But most crushingly it leaves us essentially alone. At least for now, contact is not the soul-fulfilling communion of popular myth. If we follow contemporary UFO myths, the “others” are still dictating the terms of contact. They are inscrutable specters while we are little more than their hapless lab specimens.
That makes things like Exopolitics, “prime directives” and even Kirk himself little more than superfluous and unrequited fantasies. Hell, I’ll take the “The Trouble With Tribbles” over the present one-sided relationship any day. Don’t we generally get the shaft in this scenario? Yeah, I thought so. Then I guess gratuitous quips about anal probes would be redundant.
References:
“Mungo Man” an article about another dead-end proto-human :
www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2001/01/01/2813404.htmAetherius Society website, “Why They Don’t Land Openly”:
66.241.250.4/index.cfm?app=content&SectionID=59&PageID=80“Gods and Devils From Outer Space” by Eric Norman, Lancer Books, 1973; pg. 147
P.S. Links are old and may no longer work.....
Cheers!!
Bonehead
…..I am curious. Don't take this is an insult, it's just that until I get to know the personal 'nuances' of the members, it is difficult to know what offends who! Ok the question; Is the comment you made about crop circles serious? When they were first reported I thought they might be something like a billboard for traveling ET's The art, or crop circles might mean Free food on this planet! No really I did think there was a possibility, a low one, that the circles might be made by ET's. But I ask the same question as Hal; What do they mean? Maybe if they are real we, the human species might be too dumb to decipher the message. Or maybe the indentions in the crop fields were caused by Alien spacecraft landing gear. Today there are so many C circle frauds and hoaxes that we may never ID a 'real one', UFO's and the evidence for them have a similar problem, ie lack of credibility due to massive piles of interesting but maybe false claims etc. If advanced ET exist, especially spacefaring Alien's eager to contact us, radio is a good cheap way to listen/contact us. That applies to a universe where natural law and general physics are the same here' and there'. Light speed is the speed limit in our universe, well the universe as we know it. If the universe has different 'physical' law all bets are off! Ha, ha! And if the latter is true our existence after contact might be a nightmare situation! The speed of light is what protects us from the things that haunt our nightmares.