Inexpressible Heaviness of Being

I wrote this after seeing the following article:

Study: People Believe In Aliens and Ghosts More Than God

I have a few guilty pleasures I’d like to share with you. I love shitty pop punk music of the late 90’s. I love bad horror films, the more serious it takes itself… the better.  Thus I strongly recommend the movie “Slugs” to anyone who hasn’t been blessed with it’s viewing. Along those lines, I have a hard on for television shows featuring witness accounts of Ghost and UFO witnesses. A perfect night in for me would be a pipe, a bottle of wine, four hours of people swearing they’ve seen things they can’t explain, and then sex- preferably with a lady.

When this personal affinity comes up in casual conversations most people assume that I’m into shows like “Ghost Hunters”. They in fact make me physically angry beyond all reason. The amateur creators of those shows took everything awful with the Blair Witch Project and made it a series. It expects us to believe the loud crash made in complete darkness couldn’t have been made by one of the ten crew members onsite. Even if it was all true and proved valid evidence of the existence of the after life, it’s lighting sucks and it’s hosted by Joe the Plumber nobodies with gadgets. I could easily claim to have the “most up to date Chupacabra detector”, just shit in a box, and await some expert to prove me wrong. It’s just bull shit, or Boccuzzi shit… whatever.

The reason this show stays afloat is by the ratings the purely hopeful American public gives it, because they, deep down, really think they will see a manifestation of something. They won’t. Of course not. The discovery of the existence of ghosts isn’t going to be brought to us by a half an hour Sci Fi show, it’ll be breaking fucking news worthy on every channel short of Cartoon Network (whom I can only supposed would show a Scooby Doo marathon, the nation’s first Ghost Hunters but had talking great dane, cheap laughs and drugs (everything a show really needs)).  This is assuming that whatever footage we receive is the indefinite proof that even the most skeptic will embrace. That will never happen, because it hasn’t yet and I can’t for see anything technological wise that would detect souls or emotional energy. I hope when it is created it’s called Soul-dar.

Those people who call themselves fans are looking for something more than just a cheap scare and fodder for an argument that ghost exists. They are looking for piece of mind, they hope for the existence of ghosts for proof of the continuation of themselves, mentally. You’d think believing God and ghosts would be part and parcel. I did. I’m wrong. Believing in God, by a strict religious sense, is more difficult to credit a belief on. We have no “God” stories, Scooby Doo never exposed a man in a God costume, and God does not haunt us in any other way besides childhood educations through nuns. Ghosts are more believable, there is “tangible proof”, personal accounts, blurred photos and literal ghost hunters. Of course more people would shift to being credulous in ghosts over God. And yet it is the same, it’s the hope that our conscience will carry on in time without our physical corporeal body. Only one goes to heaven, and one is left to wander Earth with the latter seeming tragic, it’s at least a sign.

While ghosts are our mental calming presence for the continuation of the individual, UFOs are our physical calming presence for that of the whole human race. They are both manifestations of our desire to escape into eternity, the saving grace of the Homo Sapien on both ends. Aliens offer a way off this rock, or a way to save it. Disease, global warming, war, and hunger. They’d answer all life questions of the universe, much like a God would. Aliens, God, and ghosts are all the same things. They are salvation, they are a way to live on forever.

If UFOs are visiting Earth, I wouldn’t be surprised if we weren’t aware. According to my beloved witness testimony shows, aliens seem to like desolate places even humans won’t want to go, like New Mexico. This is disturbing, if I came light years to a planet, I’d want a little more action, I’d want to visit the Las Vegas, Los Angeles or New York, not the Yonkers/Albuquerque/Peoria. Unless I had a problem with falling asleep on my own planet. Also, anyone who has seen a UFO traveling at a cruising speed in the sky (like a plane) is a dull-faced liar. These beings made it to Earth in what can only be perceived as intense hyper-technology far exceeding anyone’s imagination. Thus they aren’t going to obey speed laws when they can appear on the other side of the galaxy in a goddamn millisecond.

But here’s a question. If they are here, why would they talk to us? We have nothing new to share with them. If they’ve made it light years across a goddamn galaxy I’m sure they’ve heard of a microwave and a Swifter WetJet. We have nothing for them. To them, we’re the dumb fat kid who eats paste in the Universe; the entity that managed to ruin its own planet by what was self labeled as “efficiency”. Would you want to help that fat kid, be tied down to him, having him constantly thank you and following you around the hallways of the universe with ultimate questions and favors while other life forms pity your soft spot? Or would you be the one to stand back, take it all in, survival of the fittest, and watch, with sad eyes, the destruction of someone’s world, knowing it was inevitable and only a matter of time? To save them would be just that once and know that once is not enough because they have to learn. Intelligent creatures loves feeling superior.

It could never be shared that UFO’s do exist because every string of our interwoven social, political, and religious fabric would come undone. Could you imagine if tomorrow on CNN aliens made contact and were planning on coming here for a meet and greet. We’d have fucking chaos! Politically speaking, we can’t have representation from every country on Earth. I doubt the aliens would care what Qatar had to say in anything. We would need choice representation which is already a riff among Earth. Religious freaks would combust with the angst of finally being proved wrong. And socially everything we do would become meaningless and petty. Humanity deals with immediate change very poorly. We are creatures of habit not unlike every other living thing on this planet. And to change everything under the fact that humans are not special nor the smartest would push us over the edge.

Similarly, if we learned ghosts were factually walking around, things would be changed, but the inverse of the Aliens. You’d see a spike in religious interest, science would be completely baffled and politics would see so insignificant. In both cases of ghosts vs. aliens (which I hope someone makes into a movie eventually), the discovery of either would create an unavoidable insignificance. Who feels smart or important when there is so much going on in a galaxy that we will never see. Why go to work if we know our soul will live on forever?

Luckily, for the future functioning of mankind, we can never know, not now. We’re not ready for the ramifications of this hypothetical existence of the unknown. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to discover the truth, or maybe there isn’t a truth to be discovered.