Friday, October 13, 2017

Dear Aliens, Thanks but No Thanks, We're Better Off Without Your Technology



I'm a huge science fiction fan because the best of the genre projects our hopes and aspirations, as well as our fears and anxieties, in penetrating disclosures of the present.

Years ago, I read Isaac Asimov's essays about the probability of life on other planets. I see that his thoughts on this matter have been collected in a 2004 monograph ( here ).

Following Asimov's work from decades back, my thought was that there is probably life "out there" but the distance between solar systems precludes transportation, a conclusion that is pretty mainstream.

It is with this mental framework that I have approached UFO sightings and narratives.

However, over the last several years I've seen more official UFO "disclosures" by people formerly employed by the military and the defense industry.

I've pondered their stories, wondering whether the seeds of truth were limited to disclosure of contemporary Earth's concerns or whether they might bear fruit of a new kind.

I particularly enjoyed the narrative of Zero Point: The Story of Mark McCandlish and the Fluxliner, which chronicled the US reverse engineering of an alien craft that operates by exploiting zero point energy.

The narrative of zero point energy is seductive. Imagine unlimited energy awaiting release by an achievable technological innovation!

Wait! I've read this story before! It is the narrative of atomic energy that was carefully crafted in the 1940s and 1950s. Although atomic energy promised to cure disease, it has produced far more than it has cured. That is because rational administration of atomic energy was subordinated to human's demonstrable narcissism and homicidal tendencies.

Now we have a planet contaminated by artificially generated radionuclides whose chemical toxicity and radioactive decay undermine the forms and operations of life upon which we depend.

And we are on the verge of atomic warfare capable of destroying us all almost instantaneously, as evidenced by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock that has us at two and a half minutes to midnight ( here ). There are, no doubt, other terrible technologies waiting to be unleashed by our military-security complexes.

I see a definite failure in learning occurring. We stake our salvation in technological innovations that are inevitably corrupted in application by our failings.

I cannot imagine that any disruptive new technology, borrowed or stolen from an advanced civilization, is going to change the historical narrative.

Last night I came across the latest extension of the UFO meta-narrative, disclosures by high-ranking former military officers and defense contractors. Disclosing individuals' credentials would seem to preclude pure fantasy:
Leslie Kean, (2017, October 10). Inside knowledge about unidentified aerial phenomena could lead to world-changing technology. Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/inside-knowledge-about-unidentified-aerial-phenomena_us_59dc1230e4b0b48cd8e0a5c7 

The authorities cited in the article are affiliated with the To the Stars Academy, described in this video:


 

There is an implicit optimism in the name of the academy that nobly seeks innovation, education, and the "growth of consciousness."

Would the mere disclosure of advanced alien life be enough to raise consciousness?

Or will the alien technology affect our transformation by eliminating scarcity, through the material applications of its disruptive technology, thereby enabling authentic human community?

The optimistic narrative codes the alien technology as messianic and presumes we're ready for the great transformation in human consciousness that ends our homicidal psychosis.

I love the narrative but its predictive value is very low when one examines patterns established over the last two hundred years.

And its predictive value for aliens is similarly problematically optimistic. In contradiction to the alien savior narrative, consider the implications of the "bad alien" narrative, which holds that humans were genetically engineered out of existing life on earth in order to serve as slave labor.

There are no guarantees that advanced alien life is beneficent, particularly if we happen to be located on a planet with desirable resources.

Accordingly, this post serves as a special plea to any aliens - good and bad - to take their technologies and go back home and let us resolve our greatest challenges of consciousness before arming us with still greater technologies.







7 comments:

  1. Majia, you might like this one

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teBV0EoJJY8

    Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

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  2. Trump killing solar industry jobs.
    https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/13/could-trump-be-about-to-kill-u-s-solar-industry-jobs/

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  3. Trump hell-bent on destroying the United States with nuclear reactors and nuclear waste.

    https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2017/10/14/france-and-russia-compete-in-attempts-to-destroy-europe-with-defective-nuclear-reactors-us-hell-bent-to-nuclear-auto-destruct-too-thru-a-combo-of-ignorance-and-malice/

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  4. The nazi-republican chat-bots on enenews continue the berrage of propaganda and lies. Their subtle assrimmer bots try to sooth skeptical fools.

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  5. neat little detour into relative perception - point taken, very much looking forward to the new book ! and suggest this might also be of interest... https://theintercept.com/2017/10/14/tropic-of-kansas-american-war-el-akkad-book-review/

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  6. I could not help associating Karen's role in the white culture of the time, with the movie "A Boy and His Dog."
    A post-apocalyptic movie, based on a novel, by Harlan Ellison, of the same name.

    I am empathetic to the plight of Karen Carpenter. She died young. She died from bulimia and anorexia.

    Karen wanted to project the consummate white-girl fantasy. Her music appealed to the pearly white crowd. The crowd, that was supposed to be the opposite, of 60s and 70s anti-nuclear movement and new intellectualism.  She grew-up in ultra- conservative orange county. Anaheim to be exact. The carpenters were the toast of The Nixon White House, when they performed there.
    Karen Carpenter was obviously conflicted by her sexuality. Thus the chronic ipecac poisoning.

    Karen Carpenter, was a little quirky. She ultimately strove to be one of those whitesome and delightsome creatures, with a white picket fence, an white hubby, nothing contaminated by real american suburbanism. She was as white as white gets. Karen Carpenter would have fit in perfectly in the Downunder of Harlan Ellisons "A Boy and His Dog," if she had not killed herself with her anorexia and survived a nuclear holocaust.

    Downunder is an underground city, built by an elite for refuge from atomic war. Downunder is created by the the same, demented-racist bastards who considered atomic war an option , in the first place.  Ellison appreciated the irony.

    Downunder is an artificial biosphere, complete with forests and an underground city, which is named Topeka, after the ruins of the city it lies beneath. The entire city is ruled  by"The Committee."  The elite have shaped Topeka into a bizarre caricature of pre-nuclear war white America, with all residents wearing whiteface and clothes that  want to go back to a  white and racist America prior to world war 2 and never really existed.  The committee, uses robots as enforcers against dissidents. Only the whitesome and delightsome reside in downunder.

    The rest of the post-nuclear world, in Ellisons novella "A Boy and his Dog," is very realistically portrayed by its brutality, and lack of hope.

    It is much like what we are looking at as nuclear accidents begin to pile up and nuclear waste becomes ubiquitously spread, into our psychotic suburban-fantasylands.

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