Hopefully a not tooo cheeky a question . . .
What is your opinion, Smoken Joe,
about
WHY so many folks are much more eager to discuss science FICTION . . . that more or less has little daily life influence beyond entertainment . . . from a given novel or movie . . .
and yet totally refuse to discuss the facts and realities (or even the more plausible hypotheticals, various scenarios etc) of UFO stuff
which WILL DEFINITELY influence the lives of every person on the planet in the not distant future--in rather negative ways?
Oh . . . ridicule?
Or is it toooooooooooooo verboten, embarrassing to post anything on the "RESIDENT NUTTER's" threads?
Mystifying to this psychologist/sociologist
Fantasy is more comfortable, for starters. We can dream about anything from committing vile murder in our darkest moments, to lurid sexual involvement, to taking the simple steps to great wealth, all possibilities from the most vile evil to doing great humanitarian good, personal or otherwise, but given the opportunity to do so, would we actually engage in the activity of our dreams, be that diabolical or benevolent or even neutral in nature?
We are equally unlikely to actually turn those dreams into reality, good or bad, given the opportunity. Call it normalcy bias, inertia, fear of success, fear of punishment, even revulsion at our own imaginative capacity for evil, but people are comfortable with the status quo, despite being so adaptable as to even fall prey to seeing the situation that leads to Stockholm Syndrome as that status quo.
To step outside the comfortable boundaries of accepted reality and confront other possibilities as reality is a big step for most people, often too big, even if for their benefit.
While they are willing to watch
Star Wars,
Knowing, or
Close Encounters of the Third Kind and suspend disbelief for a couple hours, they aren't willing to actually
live it.
No thanks, that would make them feel small, insignificant, threatened, or dumb, but most of all,
afraid.
Among humans, one group fears change and fears the unknown.
Another, smaller, group charges into the darkness, if for no other reason than innate curiosity, these people intrepidly crave knowing what is over the next hill or around the bend in the river, and has ever looked at the night sky, wishing, wondering, pondering what it would be like to travel among the stars. Before aircraft, they dreamed of flying, too.
The latter group still, in full recognition of the stoic desire of that larger group to maintain it's comfort zone, either refuses to openly acknowledge any unconventional possibilities (much less steadfast beliefs) out of fear of being ostracized, of losing status, and even more fear of ridicule. Those challenges to the status quo will only occur after incontrovertible proof has been obtained, otherwise, most will keep silent in their newfound knowledge, or confine it to a very small group.
Some will step forward anyway.
Despite some of those who claim to have seen or other wise encountered vehicles for which they cannot assign an earthly origin having been well versed in flight mechanics, conventional and military aircraft types and their performance parameters, careers can be ended by insisting what they saw was a real vehicle of a type unknown to them with performance parameters which vastly exceed known aircraft types. Those who make the best witnesses are often people who have a position of responsibility and would lose that by testifying, especially if there was no other evidence. We won't even go into the testimony of those less qualified or ridiculed for being 'probed'.
As I believe this election proves, those among the human population, capable of rational thought, even in the presence of physical and incontrovertible evidence, are in the minority.
The flip side:
Claiming contact with aliens, or claiming to have evidence of such contact any time from the distant past to the present achieves a certain notoriety which can be exploited for personal gain, both pecuniary and of a certain prestige among those who earnestly want to believe.
Most alleged evidence is shaky, anecdotal, increasingly able to have been manipulated, and brought into question by obvious frauds, and for those reasons easily discredited. Fraud doesn't help decipher what is or isn't as far as all that goes, and past frauds may tend to discredit future evidence. If I, as an Alien, wanted my presence to be disbelieved, I'd drive a craft with a side profile like a vintage International Harvester hubcap (roughly a bell curve), and no one would believe I existed.
For those who believe humans originated as a series of random accidents leading eventually to a sentinent life form, out of billions of stars and billions of planets, in untold galaxies, and perhaps even universes, there is a distinct possibility that the same sort of postulated random events could have occurred on another planet or planets and not been wiped out by cosmic accident or any of the other ELEs that bring a species to an end. Even the possibility that they developed space travel, or that they might be more benevolent than adversarial to humans would exist.
But that doesn't mean that people who believe all that are willing to step outside that comfortable envelope of being the most highly developed creature on the planet (at least by Darwinian catechism) and yield that developmental promontory to some new arrival, nor cede that any of the development of humans or their civilization was the result of tampering by any extraterrestrial race, even as they fantasize about 'the next step', or even finding 'life!' on other planets.
The unspoken hope is that any 'life' found elsewhere is primitive, exploitable, and able to be readily conquered, just so humans can maintain their position on the pinnacle.
Even the fictional life forms in stories like
Star Wars are, arguably, lesser beings.
That that life could go zipping along interstellar distances (when we can't) is unthinkable, or at least undesirable, unless, of course, they came to share that tech and seek
our aid solving their problems (which we could do without ceding our spot as the apex of development--so far, of course). And no one wants to stop being the Apex predator. It's far too comfortable at the top of the food chain.
As a Christian, if The Almighty breathed life into the clay, molded in His image, does that mean He didn't do that elsewhere, too? Hmm. Good question, and one I expect He will answer some day. At least in the meantime, I am content to feel
very special. (Which, incidentally, places our species at that pinnacle, again, just as the Darwinists would have, but by a very different route).
I will forego the "crevo" arguments that have devastated other fora, and just say there are different schools of thought, but psychologically, they arrive on the same mountaintop: we are, in our own minds, the preeminent species in the universe, and will not willingly relinquish that pedestal, not without a fight. So despite fantasy, we really don't want to believe, and because of that, anyone who suggests otherwise will be met with disbelief, ridicule and loss of status, and the unfiltered anger of those 'in the know', which are the first three steps leading to the sudden and almost universal embrace of any scientific concept, usually credited to the very prestigious people who fought against it hardest, to the final denigration of the person or persons who introduced the concept, who may or may not be recognized for doing so until some decades after their death.
As a scientist, I look skeptically at the evidence and remain unconvinced--of everything I am not willing to take on faith. Yes, that even includes the improbable series of events which we call 'evolution'.
In the extraterrestrial arena, ever present is the human penchant for fraud, and all evidence must be weighed in that light, and against the possible gain to be had by those who present it. Is there an ulterior motive, will it sell books, t-shirts, get speaking fees, TV appearances, maybe even a show? Or does the admission of events lead down a different road for the person presenting evidence? Do they do so as speculation, or are they trying to craft a following of 'believers' for fun and profit? Or are they profoundly affected by events they are sure happened and trying to alert/inform/notify others despite the derision they know they will be subjected to?
Do/did they have physical evidence? And was it confiscated and suppressed? (which takes us back to do you want to believe?)
There are things I have seen in the night sky which I cannot identify (none of which I would claim as a vehicle of extraterrestrial origin). I chalk that up to my own ignorance of flight patterns and other phenomena, but failing to have more direct and definitive evidence am not going to call the newspapers.
Yet, what is, is, if it is, that is.
But humans will not acknowledge it if it threatens their importance as a species, or even as an individual.
That doesn't even go into the various motives governments might have for not admitting any contact, just people in general.
