Sometimes, what you can't see isn't really there. And why you may see it anyway requires some deeper consideration.
A recent New Yorker story resurrects the topic of unidentified flying objects. While drawing quite a bit of well-deserved humor from the field, it also teases some putatively serious observations, and notes that the field has gotten some high-level love from politicians like Harry Reed, Ted Stevens, and Marco Rubio. On the whole, it was disappointing to see mostly uncritical treatmtent of this retread story. Are any UFOs actually objects? The answer to that is almost universally no. Almost all turn out to be optical phenomena, which come in a startling variety that leave observers dumbfounded. The rest are mistaken aircraft, test rockets, balloons, and pranks of various sorts. Reports of UFOs have trailed off over the decades, as their cultural weight has diminished, and people's imaginations drift off to other preoccupations. Yet die-hards remain, finding conspiracies, coverups, and compelling evidence. What is one to say?
It is worth taking a big step back and asking why, over all this time, and over all the people who have been looking for clues, either for or against, nothing concrete has been found. There are no space ships, no alien bodies, no extra-terrestrial materials or technologies. There is nothing- nothing whatsoever to show for all the shocking observations, pregnant hints and leading questions. Nothing for all the political pressure and top-secret investigations.
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| We'd know if they were really coming. |
It shouldn't have to be said, but I will say it anyway, that religion has similar evidence behind it. Namely none. For all the heartfelt convictions, the positive thinking, lovely intuitions, and entrenched tradition, the supernatural remains fugative from observation. Is this by definition? Not at all. Plenty of religious claims, and the ones that are most moving and effective in efforts of proselytization, are very this-worldly- the virgin births, the resurrections, the water from wine, the walking on water, the revelations directly from god, etc.
While formal logic says that lack of evidence is not positive proof of absence, it is evidence for lack of evidence, which says alot about the momentous claims being made, about UFOs, as well as analogous conspiracies and super-powers. It is absurd to seek, after so many UFO sightings have been resolved as oddities of the atmosphere, of optical, even collective, illusion, innocent projects, or even pranks, for the "real" evidence, the true story behind the coverup, etc. It bespeaks an archetypal imagination, and, philosphically, a grasping at straws.
Lack of evidence is a serious philosophical condition, in areas where evidence should be readily available and has been fervently sought. If aliens were routinely flying through the atmosphere, we have the technology to detect them. We have countless satellites looking down to earth as well as up into the heavens, at incredible resolutions. We are increasingly using radar to detect birds, in their migrating millions. Surely an alien spaceship would show up with little problem. Naturally, the aliens do not want to be detected, and have the technology to hide themselves from view, allowing only odd glimpses during unusual weather. Did I mention grasping at straws?
What was a scientific problem thus becomes, by process of elimination, a psychological problem. Why do alien and all-powerful beings have such a hold on our imaginations? Could it be that the constellation of childhood is phenomenally durable, causing us to assume/imagine parental figures in political, celestial, and philosophical spheres? We are right now falling atavistically into a renewed kingship psychological complexes with authoritarian figures, not only amongst the Republicans in the US, but all across the world from Brazil to India. After a couple of centuries of shaking off such fixations, it is disappointing how durable our imaginative and affiliative psychology is, and how fragile the discipline it takes to recognize that the parents are not out there, in whatever guise or color, and that we are fully responsible for our world.
