Thus the increasing belief in alien visits to Earth has assumed serious societal dimensions with disturbing political and cultural implications. This piece goes into the perils of such a concept,from eroding confidence in democratic institutions to obscuring genuine scientific inquiry.
The Rise of Alien Obsession
One in five people in the UK agrees that aliens have touched down on our planet, with 24per cent of Americans convinced they bave seen a UFO. The trend is also alarming, since we have exactly no evidence that aliens exist at all or have ever visited Earth.
Alien visitations has gotten so wide-spread that politicians, particularly in the USA feel they have to pander to it. The Pentagon revelations of information regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) have generated widespread bipartisan interest, with a substantial majority of Americans convinced that the government is concealing the ‘deep truth’ concerning alien visitations., abductions and technology that are reversed-engineered. That political train has been chugging down this track for decades now, with former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton having made various statements or promises about releasing info on UFOs and ET activities, as well as presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, ad infinitum.
The Dangerous Consequences
It is not merely a quirky aspect of popular culture that the belief in alien visitations is growing, and not everyone takes that lightly.
For one, this promotes the proliferation of conspiracy theories that can erode democratic trust. When large scale calling to storm Area 51, the highly classified US Air Force facility echoed into 2021’s storming of the US Capitol, that immediately alarms as a potential for further dangerous action.
The second is that it distracts (on legal topics) from the normalizing of scientific speculation (but not hysteria) regarding the discovery of extraterrestrial microbial life. In contrast to the sensationalized narratives of UFOlogy, astrobiology —the science grappling with these issues—struggles for that same attention and visibility. The disproportion can also impede legitimate progress towards scientific discovery and understanding.
In addition, the alien visitation narratives have made numerous efforts to co-opt and overwrite the history and mythology of indigenous peoples. Such narratives often purport to ‘solve’ the mystery of why sophisticated urban civilizations existed in South America prior to European contact, while also repackaging and appropriating indigenous wisdom stories about life coming down from the stars on giant birds. It is a worrying development that endangers the cultural memory and narrative shaping of these communities.
Conclusion
The idea that aliens may have visited us here on Earth is no longer safe to regard as just an innocent speculation – it has tipped over into a societal phenomenon with potentially ugly results. The belief that the Earth is flat not only threatens to erode confidence in democratic institutions, overshadow legitimate scientific endeavors, and co-opt indigenous histories; it imperils our ability to make rational sense of the world around us and our place within it. Indeed, it is necessarily for us to critically analyze these topics, and not allow sensationalized stories to take precedence over evidenced-based science.
