So, I was talking with this dude the other day, and he played the familiar card of, 'The universe is so big, there has got to be life on other planets.'
Man, I hate this one!
and I think it can totally be taken down by placing it in a larger crypto-zoological discussion.
What i mean is: Aliens fall into the same category as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. and also their antecedants: abundant human-killing wolves, etc.
In this way: Whenever we humans encounter big, dark, abyssal spaces, they evoke a primal terror in us. In such spaces—forests, the ocean, mountain ranges—there is just an overwhelming quantity of opaque 'unknown-ness'. The foe that evokes this fear is too large and faceless to be wrestled with, and so we mythologize and create (often anthropomorphic) monsters that embody and represent the fear of the unknown. Giving it a face allows it to be a foe that can be faced down, and also then provides the fodder for folk tales. And so: Mountains::Yeti, Oceans::Sea-Monsters (except there actually are sea-monsters, so void that one), Forests::Wolves, Caves::trolls, etc.
In like manner, with the gargantuan blackness of space, we have constructed humanoid aliens. done! case-closed! there are no such thing as aliens! it's just modern man's version of the big-bad-wolf.
***
In thinking about this, I realized there is one other area where a similiar psychological 'face-making' takes place: Computers! And the myth is the Terminator! (as in - the films). Computers present us with a complexity and quantity of data that i think we register it in the same emotional category as a dark forest. I mean, think about why a film like 'Terminator' was made? what is it's source? I mean - self-aware, impossibly tough techno-monsters? not a feasible reality - it's mythic!
***
Lastly - regarding the form aliens so often 'have' - I just came across the most mind-blowing idea! that an 'alien face' is actually similiar to the way a mother's face looks when one is just an infant and cannot focus one's eyes properly, and is developing a visual memory. I.e. the most profound image we can imagine! for a proper explanation see this article (although, their take is that the mothers-face is an image 'pre-wired' into an infants brain, a la evolutionary psychology—also feasible):
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/close-encounters-of-the-facial-kind/
Insane! Blows my mind!
also - for the record - that alien image scares the shit out of me.
ok. never again will i post on such garbage.
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Also, wolves are real.
I was writing 'yeh, but they account for way less deaths than their ominous presence in folklore would imply', but I guess I'm wrong. Per wiki: "in France alone, historical records indicate that during the period 1580–1830, 3,069 people were killed by wolves"
that's a fair sum.
ok - strike wolves from my list of alien-analogues.
And I guess it was a bit sloppy of me to lump them into the cryptozoo. I was thinking about giant wolves (?)
:)
also, i realized that sometimes we mix the abysses of computers and space together! e.g. the Borg! quelle horreur! maybe this is because advanced technology has been necessary and instrumental in our exploration of space?
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