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ANOTHER YEAR IN WHICH THEY DIDN’T COME

It’s coming down to the end of another Gregorian calendar year - just a matter of hours before people will be raising their champagne glasses to greet the arrival of 2012. And of course pundits and news people and philosophers and bloggers will be looking back and recording their thoughts and making their observations about the major events of the year. As I sit and write these words, I too am looking back over the past year, but unlike the ruminations of others, I am looking at a NON event. Once again, a full 365 days have passed and they have not come. "They" being superior beings from some other world. And despite my claim of alien origin for myself and Rod Blagojevich (just Google "IKSKOBAR) - no other aliens made their presence known this year.

Readers of this blog know this has been a recurring theme, beginning in 2003 - asking, every once in a while, why "they" don’t come Of course we have no direct evidence that "they" exist, but it’s hard to believe that in this vast universe with its billions of suns and unfathomable numbers of planets - that intelligent life exists only on earth. So if they do exist, where are they and why don’t they come? The first part of that question can’t be answered, at least not yet - but there is more than one answer to the "why" that I’ve asked many times here.

Distance of course is an obvious problem. Even if the nearest inhabited planet is next door in galactic terms - say one or two thousand light years away - it would take that many years to get here , assuming that our alien visitors could travel at the speed of light. On the other hand, it may be that superior beings have found a way to make quantum leaps through space - to get from point a to point be faster than light rays can travel - much faster. And perhaps they are as capable of getting from their planet to ours as easily as our astronauts have traveled from the earth to the moon. But weather or not they’ve discovered the secrets of faster than light travel - the other reason why they don’t come here and introduce themselves is a lot easier to understand.

Back in 2003. When I first posed the question, I asked if space travelers from earth would be anxious to reveal themselves to a planetary population of 191 different nation states speaking 6800 different languages, of which 2261 had written systems, and with a history of people within those states murdering each other by the thousands annually, internally and through armed conflict with other states. I know the thought of such a planet would scare the pants off of me. But that’s where you and I live - heaven help us.

The world that existed when I started this blog in 2003 is not that much different from that of today. There are still millions of us living in abject poverty while others enjoy lives of luxury. There are still millions of us living under systems of primitive laws rooted in past centuries while millions of others live under rationally devised laws. . There are still billions of us who believe in a deity, but divided in those beliefs about the nature of that deity and often killing each other because of those differences in beliefs .

I know if I was an extraterrestrial from a world where such things as war, hunger, homelessness or hatred of others because of there religion, race or sexual orientation did not exist, observing this planet from a safe distance, monitoring our broadcast signals, able to tap into our Internet and telephonic communication devices and watching the crazed things that go on here, I don’t think it would take much time to conclude that this is a world in chaos and far from ready to be introduced to other, civilized planetary societies. I wouldn’t even have to make observations beyond this world’s leading democratic nation state - particularly if I was observing at a time when the selection process for its leaders was underway. What other evidence of the insanity of this planets inhabitants would I need?

There are people who believe that extra terrestrials have already visited this planet - that many ancient myths and religious beliefs sprang from such visits. There are even those who believe that modern man descended from such visitors - or that we were moved along in our evolutionary progress through their intervention. If that’s true, they did a lousy job and maybe are ashamed to come back and show their faces.

But whether they’ve been here before or not, it surprises me not one bit that another year has passed without a visit from another race of beings - beings that evolved perhaps billions of years before our earth was even formed. Sometimes I think that only intervention from a superior race of beings can save us from ourselves. But if you were a galactic explorer from a planet of superior beings populated by one people, speaking one language and ruled by a single panel of wise men in white flowing robes, would you want to pay a visit to the third planet from our sun in its present state - or give it a pass, maybe making a note to come back in a few thousand years to see if any order has arisen out of chaos?

I think the latter. Which is why another year has passed without them coming, other than - as I observed back in 2003 - the obligatory stop off to visit with Billy Joe Bob on the river banks of the Okefenokee river in Arkantexolina of course…..

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep looking up at the night sky. As the line says in "Send in the Clowns" - maybe next year.
posted by Jeff Smith at 12/31/2011 07:59:00 PM