- Right from the days of our growing-up years, we were brought up on unverified stories, colourful legends, fictional counts, and of course, a steady diet of movies based on humankind’s fascination with anything and everything related to aliens. The imagination of humankind runs wild when it comes to matters of the cosmos and it is here that the concept of aliens stands uniquely different. As you are aware, the fear of the unknown gets itself manifested in many intangible and subjectively questionable ways resulting in unimaginable concepts, mostly hard to digest. Taking advantage of the same, the entertainment industry is known to dish out unsubstantiated, unpalatable, and unscientific tales keeping us hooked on the concept of aliens.
PC: Freepik
- Since times immemorial, humankind is fascinated by the other life existing in the cosmos through scriptures, epics, folktales, folklores, and word-of-mouth exhortations. This has kept humanity interested and invested in the matter even now with even more bizarre announcements/developments coming to the fore from unexpected quarters. In the forefront is the USA, who else, yet again making claims about the aliens. Now, the renowned Hollywood director Steven Spielberg has added his own bit to America’s Chinese balloon-driven renewed obsession with aliens. Remember, the USA leads the nations in not only imagining and reimagining the aliens but also dishing out entertaining tales via the medium of cinemas.
- Stating further, Spielberg asked what if these are humans from 5,00,000 years later, using some nifty wormhole technology to revisit what happened on earth in the 21st century? It’s mathematically impossible that we’re the only intelligent species in the cosmos, he claimed. Americans have been sighting UFOs since the Cold War years of the 1950s and 1960s. Stories of flying saucers, alien body snatchers, and reports of abductions and experiments crop up regularly, and Hollywood has fed these fantasies, as has an online subculture. Even scientific blue-chip types like NASA had a programme on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. After government funds dried up, private enthusiasts kept beaming radio messages into space.
PC: Freepik
- Remember, in June 2021, the Pentagon released a long-awaited UFO report on mysterious aerial sightings – but boringly, the military’s concern might be Russian or Chinese surveillance rather than aliens. Still, there’s a Pentagon office to analyse UFOs. On the flip side, if aliens don’t exist, Americans would have to invent them. They are a window into psyches and societies. Conspiracies simmer when faith in governments and institutions is low. They prompt the question of what is empirically knowable, and what is mysterious. They raise questions about faith, as much as about science. Curiosity and hospitality towards the stranger or the Other, is something that we need more of, everywhere in the world. Let’s continue to look out for aliens.
