Alien Monikers and Mass Denial
 
    What alternative language to ET and alien might break our spell of mass denial?    
       Extra-dimensional?
    Something “other?”
    From the “subtle realm?”
    I know about denial, because I’ve been there (and probably am still there on issues I don’t recognize), polite but panicked to move away from odd or maybe crazy company.
    Now I’m the one in shock that I’m thought “out there!”
    But it’s the words, I want to cry!  Don’t get stuck on cartoons associated with those words!  Please.  This is far too important....
    But words – alas – they do get us stuck.  Remember in the early 70’s how columnists (mostly male) howled with laughter at the new honorific Ms?  They loved to say it:  Miiiizzzz.  And laugh.  And many women, neither Miss nor Mrs. (neither virgin nor married), were at a loss for how to talk around the laughter.
    “Baggage” attached to words can end a talk before it begins, making public discussion and cultural evolution unnecessarily difficult.  So, let us see if I can hack through the baggage with a selection of definitions from Encarta.
       But first, get this:  Two researchers, Norman Don and Gilda Moura, hooked up people who believed they’d had alien contact to EEGs and discovered that, when they remembered or relived, through hypnosis, their experiences, the people displayed a frontal-lobe hyper-arousal pattern similar to that found only in advanced spiritual meditators.  (Don, Norman S., and Moura, Gilda.  1997.  “Topographic Brain Mapping of UFO Experiencers.”  Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol 11, no 4, pp. 435-53.)
     Okay, now the definition:
 
a·li·en n  1. a being from another planet or another part of the universe, especially in works of science fiction [at least Encarta didn’t imply only in science fiction – I’m impressed!]...  adj 1. outside somebody’s normal or previous experience and seeming strange and sometimes threatening [yup].  2.  not in keeping or totally incompatible with the [normally understood] nature of something or somebody.  ...4.  from another world or part of the universe, or involving or relating to extraterrestrial beings.  [Thank you.]
 
    Definition 2 pretty well defines our social dilemma:  things “alien” upset our understanding of the nature of things.  They present us a quandary that few outside, or inside, philosophy departments are prepared to deal with:  the nature of knowledge (epistemology), the nature of being (ontology), the nature of existence, time, space and causality (metaphysics) and, of course, the nature of the universe (cosmology).
    No wonder people back away – too many fundamentals called into question.  Who wants to upset their apple carts that way?  Few, and with understandable reason – except those of us who’ve had our epistemologies dragged through the walls along with our immobilized and otherwise-would-be-screaming bodies.
    I’m joking.  Not about going through the walls, but about why people don’t want to talk.  I actually believe that people are often up for a good discussion about fundamental things, game to exercise their brains, throw around ideas, slay sacred cows, free up their minds from its natural shackles of habit.  But the ridicule.  No one wants to be laughed at.  I remember the day a new friend spoke alien aloud in a cafe without lowering his voice.  That was the end of that friendship.
    The problem is that the words have been attached to silly cartoons.  Admit it:  You imagined beings with black, slanted eyes when I wrote the word alien, right?  Those faces are printed on T-shirts, beer bottles, guitar picks, and more, and molded into bob-headed plastic car ornaments – and more.  I even once bought a green guitar pick myself with a black cartoon alien head printed on it, when I visited the gift shop in Roswell, as a joke, for a friend, so I paid money to be part of the problem.  Dang!
    Those poor beings can’t help it if we think they’re so funny looking that we can’t take their existence seriously.  
    But seriously, consider how well we’ve been trained to laugh at The Other.  Remember how white people used to think African-heritage slaves and former slaves were worthy of caricaturizing on gizmos and in advertising?  Deep black faces, bulging white eyes.  Whatever we want to put down, we exaggerate in an image and convince people to laugh at it.  
    Just as our culture quit using Black, Oriental, and most other racial caricatures decades ago (though we’re struggling with Native American and now the latest:  Middle Eastern), it’s time we quit using, and even thinking in, alien caricatures, so that we might see the reality of the beings that might exist behind them.
    Whether you think aliens have been shot down, their bodies hidden on military bases and otherwise disrespected while trying to wake us up to help us save our planet; or they’ve been rightly maligned for harvesting our DNA for repugnant, selfish purposes; or something in between or off to the side, or something else entirely, this is not an insignificant subject, if simply because different people, around the world, have posited theories as diverse as these.  Perceiving a new dimension might shed some light on important issues today, as well as light on who and what we are.
    Because this is a world-wide phenomenon, and some people are isolated, marginalized and ostracized, medicated and institutionalized, while other people claim their experience has been the spiritual opening they needed, maybe we could minimize the former experience and maximize the latter, if we’d look at it.
    If I’m seriously mistaken, let’s talk.  Maybe you can help me.  Otherwise, maybe I have some important information to share that might help you see a larger world.  
    Around the world, I’m actually in good company, with Presidents, shamans, movie stars, police and military officers, and common, honest, normal people like you.  
    Just as people of conscience quit using racially denigrating images when they were made aware, I hope we will consider removing the stereotypical alien image from our minds.  The next time we hear the word alien, I hope we’ll think outside our mental boxes.  Stretch our minds; consider what might be unknown.  I bet it’ll be way beyond words.
 
Thursday, February 18, 2010