We're Listening!

“We're Listening!”

By: George

The universe is large. So large, in fact, that it is believed to be in a state of near infinite expansion. To concider near infinity, however, is, at the best of times, an oxy-moron and, at the worst of times, an oxy-moron. Those who are under this assumption of near infinite expansion make it their business to determine the fundamental 'itness' of the things which make up our observeable universe and even to theorize about the un-observeable universe. These people, as I will classify as 'others', to avoid confusion with 'regular folks', are highly trained observers of the universe visible from our night sky. On the other hand, for those who are consequently not a member those aformentioned 'others', then chances are an uncomfortable number have attempted to take matters into their own hands. And by 'matters' I mean 'communicating with aliens' and by 'hands' I mean 'unfortunate evolution of opposable thumbs which have allowed for the the dexterical ability to create super-powered radio recievers.'

These are the kinds of people who spend their days in garages adding wires, conductors, resistors and diodes to an already complex system of wires, conductors, resistors and diodes in the hopes that this agglomeration will have enough juice to penetrate our ozone layer and reach distant space dwelling folk. As absurd as this may be, perhaps they're on to something. While this phenomenon is but a few decades old, originating a short while after the infamous Roswell incident, the wish to communicate with distant interstellar ambivalent entities is a long running tradition. Why should religion hold complete monopoly over the attempts to have one way discussions with uninterested creatures of a distant planet?

For they certainly do have much in common.

Both christianity and Roswellian fundamentalism started by the chance encounter with an event which neither could understand. For Christianity, that starts with a cockeyed 'prophet' with dellusions of grandeur, who attempts to convince the people of bronze age jewish Palestine, by performing a series of miracles, that he was the son of God sent down from heaven to save huamnity from their sins. In a society plagued with murder, theft and purgery, this would have seemed like a message from god. To think that God has sent his son to Earth in order to validate their existences and to promise infinite forgiveness was almost too good to be true. This prophet, it would seem, was destined for an un-happy ending. An ending prophesized by earlier texts and one which would most certainly come to fruition if there was to be any kind of martyrdom. And so he was crucified and the sign of the cross has ever sinse been a symbol for Christianity and also a medium between ourselves and our incorporeal savior. Martyrdom, however, would not be what it is were it not for opressive governments. And we thank the Roman Empire for filling in their end of the deal.

As for Ufology, we see similar paths emerge. First, we see an initial burst of excitement over a crashed object in the New Mexico dessert, near a top-secret air base. Quickly hushed up and explained to be a weather balloon by the government, people in the immediate vicinity of the incident are not easily pursuaded. They think something out of this world crashed in their backyards. With no hard evidence to back up this claim, they do what would be natural to do, and that is to fabricate facts to fit the theory. An entire generation of techno-geeks emerge out of this, attempting to communicate with these evolutionary giants in outer space. This is paralled with religions un-yielding faith inherent in praying for devine intervention. It is, in fact, paralleled to almost dizzying proportions. By virtue of the mysterious events surrounding Roswell and aliens in general, entire religions have been founded to help channel our biological needs towards prostration. The most notable of these facetious ideologies are Raelianism and its spin-off, Scientology. While Raelinism is a near perfect nerd-translation of Christianity, Scientelogy takes the geek-factor to whole new levels of crazy. Another common feature to these dangerous ideas are the propitiations made towards their subsequent devine entities with the acceptance that they will return one day to take them all away from this fleshy world of materialism into an existence of eternal bliss, for those who take part in the required rites, or unending torment, for those who denounce themselves of these wild ideologies.

It certainly would be an event worth commemorating, if we, once and for all, were privy towards irrefutable evidence in favour of theistic religions' claims for understanding the will of their creators. However, until a day as such were to come, I suppose we have no other choice but to remain corporeal creaturs of evolution, destined to fanciful interpretations of natural phenomenon as a way to add meaning where meaning need not be had. We'll continue to make bewildering monuments of devotion to these ideas and we'll continue to point our radios to the sky in the hopes that our prophets will return to tell us that everything will be alright.

The return of a prophet at the end of days is one of those hallmark situations surrounding the Abrahamic religions and their cousin orphans, which have evolved centuries after the established powerhouses have set up shop and organized their monopolies. The prophet's return is the indication that the world of the flesh has met its end and that it's about time for us to shed ourselves of this menial existence so as to be welcomed with open arms into the kingdom of heaven by God at the pearl gates. Religious fundamentalists would not be so were it not for their incessant wish to see this return in their life times, for it would validate their claims to transcendant knowledge of the will of god and their subsequent sacrifices in the name of that deity. In modern America, evangelicals have claimed authority over this as the Rapture, where they will be chosen to lead the second coming. This heralded death wish has lead nations to war with a single goal in mind: the successful conclusion to a self-fullfiling prophesy. One need but wonder, if all these religious share a common goal towards extinction so as to be united, once and for all, with the all powerful creator, why bother with all the intermidiary wars, centuries of oppresion, tyranny and torture and not simply proceed directly towards the inevitable? It's questions like that which are what make these wars so fundamentally terrifying. It would be easy, wouldn't it, to hurry the process of extinction, not by catastrophic climactic change, depilitating epidemics or the natural collapse of our solar heat source, but by nuclear and chemical warfare. Well, we're listening, and, in the language of the prophets, the end will be glorious. Point your radio crosses, aluminum hats and satellite stars to the sky and pray that you do hear something. It would be a shame to have put all this effort for nothing.