Alien Nation

by Todd Paul

The aliens have arrived.

Well, figuratively. In case you hadn't noticed, those bald, big-eyed, pointy-chinned guys are everywhere--on T-shirts, key chains, coffee mugs and lighters. Aliens stare at us from magazine racks, shout from billboards. Metallic alien face stickers are hawked in K-Marts from fifty-cent vending machines. They all look the same--like the greenish-grey fellow on the cover of Whitley Streiber's first creepy account of his own multiple abductions and invasions. Maybe that's what started it all. In any case, aliens have become a national obsession, to the point where it seemed as though every movie last summer was about aliens, government conspiracies, or both--usually both.

The conspiracist explanation for this phenomenon is that the aliens are real, though fictionalized. That is, the government, in order to get us used to the idea of aliens, is promoting a wave of alien-based movies, books, rumor and tabloid journalism. Presumably, some fine day, the government will announce that yes, aliens have been in our midst since nineteen-forty-something; they just held off telling us until they were sure we could handle it.

Well, maybe. Personally, I think crediting the U.S. government with having pulled off such a successful, long-lasting and complex conspiracy is going a bit too far. Remember, these are the same people who brought us the "secret" invasion of Panama, the Stealth Bomber, Watergate, Vietnam, Ronald Reagan and a Vice-President who couldn't spell "potato."

A more interesting question than "Where are they hiding whatever we can't quite make out in all those blurred, out-of-focus photos" is, "Why do we want to believe in/identify with aliens in the first place?" Even if the government is feeding us propaganda, we're the ones eating it. I mean, Reddy Kilowatt was cute too, but you don't see his face on T-shirts. Why is a culture that has in the past identified with Hulk Hogan, Superman and Paul Bunyan now turning to something that looks like a cross between a praying mantis and Twiggy?

One could argue, perhaps, that aliens--the abducting, experimenting, impregnating, invading aliens of recent pop culture--are a manifestation of an overriding desire to externalize evil. Ancient cultures believed illness was caused by bad spirits that had to be exorcised. Modern science teaches us illness is caused by bad viruses and bacteria that have to be driven out with antibiotics or inoculated against. Either way, the evil comes from outside. It's an external force to be repelled, not a part of us or a function of our own inner lives.

On a larger scale, aliens are the ultimate outsiders onto which we can project our fears. They are the strangers who come in the night to violate our bodies and then wipe our memories clean, influence our government and control our very thoughts. We can blame them for our ills because, as yet, there is no Alien Anti-Defamation League. Is it any surprise that in a culture as obsessed as ours with body worship--the denial of death and embrace of everlasting youth, sex, physical perfection--AIDS and aliens are our two major terrors?

But this only explains one side of the alien invasion--the bad side. What about our desire to contact aliens? What about Heaven's Gate? What about E.T.?

I think there are conflicting currents in our culture, in any culture. I think the aliens are more than just our version of the Devil. Quite possibly, they're also our version of God.

Don't act so shocked. You've heard the theories--aliens as creators that "seeded" our planet, Biblical visions explained as UFO sightings. Many of us can no longer believe in a Heaven in the clouds and a Hell underground--we've flown to the moon, and folks, there ain't nothing there. Still, we want to believe. No one's sued the Air Force for religious persecution--yet. It's probably not far off.

I can understand the need to believe in something beyond ourselves, especially in something beyond this world we've made such a mess of. I once read a paper by a Harvard theology professor who compared human patterns of population growth and development to swarming behaviors in insects. Certain insects, he said, display a curious pattern of behavior just before leaving an old nest to colonize a new one. First the rate of population growth goes through the roof. Then all the insects gather in a compact swarm (think New York City) and become highly agitated. Finally, they leave the nest and go off in search of a new home.

According to this theory, and taking into account the human population explosion and inner-city clustering, we should be just about ready to leave the nest. Question is, where are we going to go?

I've been feeling a little alienated myself, recently. It's not that I dislike the little green bald guys. It's just that looking to visitors from other plants doesn't seem to be the way to solve our problems on this here planet. Even if they exist--which I doubt--it's still up to us to find better ways to live, right here, right now. And we can do that. We already know what to do. We just have to admit to ourselves who and what we are, take responsibility, and claim our knowledge.

Forget about communicating with creatures from distant worlds. It's time to start communicating with humans from this one. E.T., go home. ++