I mean really serious.

Because in case you have heard, the most credible believer in alien/human encounters since Dennis Kucinich has been recently thrust into the public eye. Actually, as an Apollo 14 spacedude who chilled on the surface of the moon for nine hours, he is a helluva lot more credible than Kucinich on these issues. His name is Dr. Edgar Mitchell. Here’s what he has to say:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtUe8f9L0_o]

Oh yeah by the way he grew up in Roswell, NM. Oh, and he’s also into some far out stuff, like dyadic models of consciousness. At any rate, after Mitchell recently renewed his claims that folks within the government were secretly covering up over 60 years of extraterrestrial contact, NASA released a delicately worded statement lauding Mitchell as a great American and “disagreeing with his opinions.”

A little more context - some of the more credible (eg less easily explained) UFO sightings in recent memory occurred over Texas earlier this year, with all the fanfare and t-shirt sales you might expect from a small town’s encounter with Aliens/international media.

So what’s up? Because talking about aliens in a serious way is so deeply coded to mean you are crazy (which is why asking Denny K the question during the presidential debate was a way to de-legitimize him), I almost hesitate to continue. But since the New York Times broke the ice today with a pretty rational, national security-related argument for investigating UFOs, perhaps the time is right.

First of all, I do think it’s safe to say that the people want the truth. If tomorrow we all found out about Aliens on Earth, would there be a bit of bedlam? Probably. But the existence of life on other planets - sentient life, no less - would be a game-changer for our entire civilization. That would make such knowledge dangerous, yes, but also of such value, with such potential to increase our understanding of ourselves and to foster cooperation and unity, as to be worth knowing. And, on the other hand, keeping such knowledge secret - perhaps even from our elected leaders, as Mitchell claims - seems quite dangerous indeed.

One other speculative statement: Why would such a thing be kept so secret, the target of so much alleged disinformation? In other words, can we posit a realistic, Men in Black type scenario where even facially benevolent reasons for a cover-up exist? IF sentient extraterrestrial visitors have come to earth and IF such life is so technologically advanced that they could easily destroy Earth, THEN we would be at their mercy, and our government/s in an easy position to be extorted into covering up Alien life on Earth.

Now, these hypothetical Aliens might do this for a number of reasons, ranging from the malevolent [freaky experimentation a la X-Files] to the innocuous [International way station and tourist destination a la Men in Black] to absurd [Imagine, for example, that some ancient civilization is bereft of culture, and they bully earth into covering up their existence while they download every cultural artifact on the planet, from Gilgamesh to the Beastie Boys.

Okay, one final point: What other explanation could there be for an astronaut who walked on the freaking moon to lie about this?

I think it’s a safe assumption that this eminently respectable astronaut would not lie when directly stating that he believed, based on numerous conversations with high officials, that Alien life has visited earth and that it’s being covered up. So what other explanation could there be? Would the anonymous officials whom he spoke to all lie to him? Could the old-timers have been a little fuzzy about what happened in 1947 at Roswell?

This seems the most plausible scenario which refutes Mitchell - that he himself has been the target of disinformation. Actually, there’s a somewhat legit-seeming investigative piece on this subject, which confirms that there are at least a few government officials who are basically spying on “the UFO community,” as it were. The why could be a government coverup of Aliens, but it could also be an information war that includes feeding lies to such credible folks as Dr. Mitchell. Either way, Google is probably not your friend in terms of getting to the bottom of this one. According to the Times, neither is radar.

Ultimately, one would think that a trained scientist like Mitchell wouldn’t come out so publicly without satisfying his own considerable skepticism first. More as develops, I think.

Tags: ETs, Existential crises, sci-fi, the universe

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