An Over-the-Top Blog About UFOs, the Paranormal, and the Collective Psyche
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Why UFOs Don’t Exist (In An Objective Sense)
by Dennis Stamey
Part V.
We are Alone…All Alone
Let’s face it. The human race is growing superstitious. Did you read all of the hoopla regarding the eclipse of April 6, 2024? People across social media were talking nonsensically about a zombie apocalypse, a UFO invasion, as well as about different end-of-the-world scenarios. Even evangelical Christian leaders were getting worked up asserting that this occurrence fits in with end-time prophecies. Kookiness unfettered.
When there was a total eclipse on May 30, 1984, I don’t remember any fanfare. In fact, I snuck out to watch it alone while at work because none of my co-workers were interested. True, there was no social media back then, which is the biggest dispenser of gossip and tall tales ever devised, but even news channels paid it little attention.
So, why are we more superstitious than ever before, more likely to believe in everything from aliens to sorcery or to attach mystical significance to natural events? We think it is because people have lost touch with reality, a notion we’ve alluded to many times (see Part III of our article “The Enchanted Forest”). Smartphones and the Internet, our addictions, only detach us from the real world. Consequently, we’re forgetting how to interface with our own species. When something aberrant does happen outside of this virtually simulated world we inhabit be it an eclipse or even a school shooting, we give it a mythological spin. Real life has become unpredictable and uncontrollable, making us feel powerless and vulnerable. Our approach to understanding the unforeseen and the unusual has thus become illogical regardless of our education. Eclipses become harbingers of disaster and school shootings the products of conspiracies. Common sense is becoming a rare commodity.
Conspiracies and signs from the heavens are just part of the new mythology we are weaving. Belief in aliens is another and in the United States (and possibly the world), it is growing. According to surveys by YouGov America, in 2022 34 percent of Americans thought UFOs were alien ships. In 1996, that figure was just 20 percent. UFOs aside, nearly two-thirds of respondents in 2022 said they are convinced there is extraterrestrial life.
We can’t dispute that people have seen strange aerial phenomena since time-out-of-mind. Most of it can be explained away but there’s still a solid residue that defies logic. But are these objects really alien spacecraft? What the ET proponents (or X-Filers as I like to call them since that TV series seems to serve as the inspiration for all their beliefs) don’t grasp or perhaps refuse to grasp is that, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, you can’t exceed the speed of light. The speed of light is the speed limit of the universe because the faster you move, the more energy you need. According to our understanding of physics, you would need unlimited energy to journey just at the speed of light. Because of this, the speed of light can be approached but never reached.’ In the vacuum of space, however, light has no choice, irrespective of its wavelength or frequency, but to travel at one speed and one speed only that being the speed of light in a vacuum. This is also the speed that any form of pure radiation, such as gravitational radiation, must travel at, and also the speed, under the laws of relativity, that any massless particle must travel. Deep stuff, but important to understand if you intend to flaunt the alien theory.
The closest confirmed planetary system is Gliese 832 which lies roughly 14.8 light years away. If other civilizations are visiting Earth, which is the consensus among the alien believers due to the wide variety of humanoid types being reported, “multiple species” as they call it, then they may be coming from as far off as 40-50 light-years, maybe 100. They would therefore have to be traveling far beyond the speed of light to reach us within a reasonable amount of time.
When I broach this subject with X-Filers they stutter and stammer and finally blurt out that the aliens are probably utilizing wormholes, portals, or even other dimensions as shortcuts through the galaxy. Portals and multi-dimensions are a total fallacy not even worth considering. A wormhole, more or less a tunnel connecting two points in spacetime, either a straight chute or a winding path, is totally speculative but loosely based on the concept of black holes and white holes and how they might be joined. But, again, it’s purely academic just like the simulation theory. There’s no evidence, just wishful thinking, a wet dream of theoretical physicists.
But wait, it gets worse for the X-Filers. The evolutionary process that took place on Earth to create the human species, despite our horrible faults, can likely never be duplicated anywhere else within the universe. Intelligence depends on a chain of seven rare innovations including the origin of life, photosynthesis, complex cells, sex, complex animals, skeletons, and intelligence itself. Each of these concoctions has a one percent chance of evolving because they are so complex. The odds of intelligence evolving is a mind-blowing 1 in 100 trillion. Here’s another kicker, it took all these innovations almost 5 billion years to form. Photosynthesis evolved 1.5 billion years after the Earth’s formation, complex cells after 2.7 billion years, complex animals after 4 billion years, and humans after intelligence 4.5 billion years. What planets have time for that to happen? Evolution is a highly improbable scenario but somehow it happened here on this world. This negates the hypothesis that we are being visited by numerous alien races. Even one species is far-fetched enough.
Of course, consider that the Milky Way has over 100 billion stars, and there are over a trillion galaxies in the universe, and that’s just the tiny fraction of the universe we can see. Even if habitable worlds are rare, their sheer number suggests there is a lot of life out there. But as the late Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi asked, “Where are they?” This question has come to be known as the Fermi paradox. Aside from reports of peculiar objects flitting through the sky, we have no solid undeniable evidence of life in the cosmos, no signals, and no traces of alien interference on the moon or Mars.
One explanation is the “Great Filter” hypothesis, which posits that before intelligent life has the opportunity to escape the boundaries of its home planet, it hits some sort of wall, a wall known as the Great Filter. The Great Filter could be anything from climate change to a nuclear war. Again, nothing but supposition.
Now the X-Filers, who suffer from a bad case of cognitive dissonance, will fire back and say, “What about disclosure?” as if the word disclosure is a talisman that will ward off any skepticism. They also see it as something akin to the promised Second Coming of Christ. Once disclosure is made, everyone will know the reality of space visitors and we might even join with our cosmic brethren to usher in the New Age. Ha!
The X-Filers always keep reminding everyone that multiple whistleblowers are going to come forward and reveal to Congress the locations of the crashed spaceships and the alien bodies (maybe even live aliens). We are also supposed to believe that the government has been covering up the evidence for over 70 years. Really? Few can keep a secret that long.
There’s also reverse engineering going on we are told. As retired Maj. David Grusch testified before a House Oversight subcommittee last year, “I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access.” Reverse engineering or back engineering, by the way, is a process that is designed to extract enough data from a product and then to be able to reproduce that product.
As we’ve already mentioned, Major Grusch suffers from PTSD as a result of being in active combat in Afghanistan. PTSD is a mental disorder and those who have it might become delusional or at worst hallucinate. Possibly he imagined that he was given secret information about aliens. He even made the outrageous statement that the U.S. government has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s. That was long before the advent of the flying saucers. Grusch is obviously the last person you want testifying to Congress.
Where is all this reverse engineering taking place? Although Grusch never told anyone the location, Bob Lazar claimed it was Area 51. Most X-Filers agree. But many Area 51 veterans around the country are now free to talk about their contract work for the CIA in the 1960s and ’70s at this arid, isolated Southern Nevada government testing site having been sworn to secrecy for the past 50 years and they scoff at the idea that the installation was connected with UFOs (see the article “Area 51 Vets Break Silence: Sorry But No Space Aliens or UFOs” by Erik Lacitis, The Seattle Times, March 17, 2010). The Air Force and the “Agency” though didn’t mind the stories about alien spaceships since it helped cover up the secret aircraft being tested there.
Naturally, this won’t deter the X-Filers who are so conditioned by social media that they are unable to comprehend any conflicting views no matter how strong the evidence. So, why bother to argue with them? Better to argue with a stump. They will go on believing in aliens, listening to lying podcasts and YouTube channels, not to mention binging on episodes of The X-Files, unable to separate truth from fallacy, and the myth will continue indefinitely. Space is the final frontier as Captain Kirk said, the only origin left for unidentified aerial phenomena unless we blame it on secret government projects (which doesn’t explain those bizarre humanoids). Maybe if we start believing in flying dragons they will replace spaceships and people will not only see them but claim they had climbed onto the back of one and flew around the world.
So, if UFOs aren’t extraterrestrial and there’s no life elsewhere in the universe, what are we left with (Arthur C. Clarke said either possibility is terrifying)? A Christian or even a Muslim would point out that both the Bible and the Koran don’t mention aliens being in Heaven. Ergo, if aliens really exist, they are unredeemable by either Jesus or Allah. Sorry, aliens. After all, Earth is the home of the Garden of Eden, a sinless place where humans were supposed to dwell in communion with God, that was until Satan intervened.
A Buddhist or Hindu would be more accepting of extraterrestrial life. After all, they believe in a multi-tiered universe. But a small minority of Eastern mystics might tell us that the Earth is the seat of the cosmic mind and that we are all particles of that great consciousness. To exist, the cosmic mind must have self-realization and that can only come through individual awareness. Basically, it feeds on our hopes and fears to stay alive. as John A. Keel said about God in his book The Eighth Tower: “He is not a He but an It; a field of energy that permeates the entire universe and, perhaps, feeds off the energy generated by its component parts.”
According to Theosophists, that spiritual movement from the 19th century loosely inspired by Eastern teachings but mostly based on bullshit and still thriving today, once this world is used up, the cosmic mind creates a new one and the process begins anew.
Do we believe any of this? Uh, no. It’s easier to accept aliens. Keel’s electromagnetic spectrum, however, does jibe with our own ideas about tulpas and paranormal manifestations. Nonetheless, we can’t help but ask that if we are all alone, is it by accident or design? Logic says accident, and simplicity says design. Did some Higher Power construct this lush planet and its denizens for its amusement? Perhaps it enjoys watching us lose our minds, which are doing steadily each day. Is that why we’re here because we’re pawns in a sick game? Or is it to sustain a cosmic mind with our thoughts (this sort of fits within our own convoluted theory about the Trickster and the collective psyche, the Trickster being a depot of both folkloric beliefs and communal stresses and manna that it reflects back to us in frightening ways)? Or, if life is a fluke, the steps of evolution akin to winning the lottery over and over, to simply live, procreate, raise hell, and then die?
When I mentioned to some online folks that we are getting more superstitious, a gentleman reminded me that we have always been superstitious. Yes, he’s absolutely right. We have indeed. It’s a human trait, one that we can’t expunge. Even if we try to bury this irrationality with high-tech gadgetry and burgeoning knowledge about the natural order, it will eventually overflow like a haphazard dam kids built in a creek, leaving us as mystical and silly as ever. And it’s that irrationality that allows us to see ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, the whole gamut of the strange. To quote Keel once more: “The most fearsome monsters of all may inhabit the dark corners of our mind waiting for us to release them through our beliefs and gullibility.”
Trickster 
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