D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April 2010
Alien Monikers and Mass Denial
If we can get past the cartoons, maybe our consciousness can open up.
By Jean Eisenhower
Would different words help break the spell of our mass denial?
"Extra-dimensional"?
Something "other"?
From the "subtle realm"?
I've been in denial (like all of us, and probably still am on issues I don't recognize): polite but quietly panicked to escape the embarrassing company.
 |
Artwork done by the
author years ago after an alien experience. |
Now I'm chagrined to realize I'm thought a little "out there"!
But it's the words, I want to cry! Don't get stuck on cartoons associated with those words!
But alas, words do get us stuck. Remember in the early 1970s how columnists (mostly male) howled with laughter at the new honorific "Ms."? They loved to say it: Miiiizzzz. And laugh. And many women, neither Miss nor Mrs., were at a loss for how to talk around the laughter.
It's the same today with these words, trying to describe something other.
"Baggage" attached to words can end a talk before it begins. Which makes public discussion and cultural evolution more difficult than necessary.
So, let us see if we can hack through the baggage with a selection of definitions from Encarta. But first...
Here's a neat bit of science: Two researchers, Norman Don and Gilda Moura, hooked up people who believed they'd had alien contact to EEGs and discovered that, when they relived through hypnosis, or simply remembered their experiences, the contactees displayed a frontal-lobe hyper-arousal pattern similar to that found only in advanced spiritual meditators. They published their findings in 1997 in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Somethin's goin' on.
"alien n 1. a being from another planet or another part of the universe, especially in works of science fiction [they didn't imply only in science fiction — I'm impressed!]... adj 1. outside somebody's normal or previous experience and seeming strange and sometimes threatening [yup]. 2. not in keeping or totally incompatible with the [normally understood] nature of something or somebody.... 4. from another world or part of the universe, or involving or relating to extraterrestrial beings. [Thank you.]
"Outside normal experience...sometimes threatening" — that's where our dilemma lies: Things "alien" upset our understanding of the nature of reality. They present us a quandary that few people outside, or inside, philosophy departments are willing to deal with (not when there are so many great entertainments for distraction).
Things alien cast doubt on our thinking and existence in ways that few people imagine their thinking and existence CAN be questioned: how we know (epistemology), the nature of our being (ontology), the nature of our existence, time, space and causality (metaphysics) and, of course, the nature of our universe (cosmology).
Those are way too many fundamentals called into question. Who wants to upset their apple carts that way? Few, apparently, except those of us who've had our epistemologies dragged through the walls along with our immobilized and otherwise-would-be-screaming bodies.
I'm joking. Not about going through the walls, but about why people don't want to talk.
I believe most honest people are up for a good discussion about fundamental things, game to exercise their brains, throw around ideas, slay sacred cows, and free up their minds from our natural shackles of habit. Good thing.
But the ridicule...? No one wants to be laughed at.
The problem is that the words have been attached to silly cartoons. Admit it: You imagined beings with black, slanted eyes when I wrote the word "alien," right? Images duplicated on T-shirts, beer bottles, bobble-headed plastic car ornaments, guitar picks and more. I even once bought a green guitar pick myself with a black cartoon alien head printed on it, when I visited a gift shop in Roswell, as a joke, for a friend, so I paid money to be part of the problem.
Dang. Those poor beings can't help it if we think they're so funny looking, we can't take their existence seriously.
But seriously, consider how well we've been trained to laugh at The Other. Remember how white slave owners and their progeny used to think African-heritage slaves and former slaves were worthy of caricaturizing on gizmos and in advertising? Deep black faces, bulging white eyes. Whatever some people want to put down, they reduce to a caricature, then encourage others to laugh.
Just as our culture foreswore using black, Oriental and (most) other racial caricatures decades ago, it's time we quit using, and thinking in, alien caricatures, so we might see the reality that lies behind. But it's for more than mere politeness and respect (as if you believed these beings even exist).
Foreswearing caricatures can accomplish even more than that. Whether you think aliens have been shot down, their bodies hidden on military bases and otherwise disrespected while trying to wake us up to help us save our planet; or they've been rightly maligned for harvesting our DNA for repugnant, selfish purposes; or something in between, off to the side, or something else entirely, this is not an insignificant subject — if simply because different people, around the world, have told personal stories, congruent with each other, that expand the world in which we live. It's about our own consciousness.
Consider, also, this aspect of compassion: People have lost their marbles over these experiences, and have been isolated, marginalized, ostracized, even medicated and institutionalized, all because the majority of people have been convinced to laugh.
Meanwhile, others claim their experiences prompted life-changing insights and spiritual openings.
Maybe we can learn to accentuate the latter and minimize the former — if we'd look.
Besides, ya'll, (speaking entirely selfishly now) it's meeee, someone in your community, someone trusted to manage projects, teach English, counsel, and be a friend.
I was a hermit once and hardly care if I'm ostracized by a few people, but there are others in our community, silenced, who need to have their experiences heard, but are mute at the thought you'd rip them with laughter, or silence.
If I'm seriously mistaken about this subject, let's talk. Explain the error of my perceptions.
On the other hand, maybe I have info you could use. Again, we should talk.
But first, I'd like to suggest that we all intend to let the cartoons fade from our minds. And the next time we hear the word "alien," we let ourselves wander a little outside our mental frameworks. And consider what might be as yet unknown.
I believe it'll be beyond words.
Jean Eisenhower is an award-winning journalist and author, professor, hypnotherapist, and experiencer of events called "anomalous" (in our culture, not necessarily in others). More on this subject can be found at www.rattlesnakefire.net She lives in Silver City.