in which I give too much credence to the History Channel

I’m taking a short break from what will hopefully be more posts on music and music-related matters to enter a piece of dismay toward a select population of human beings. I try not to dwell upon the foibles of my fellow sentient, carbon-based, hairless ape bipeds, but there is one in particular that is nothing more than irascible: the idea or suggestion that humans are not responsible for such things as the Pyramids, Machu Picchu, or other ancient wonders of the world, but alien beings, extraterrestrials, are.

On cable television and upon the lips of many a conspiracist there is spoken speculation rife with “proof” hailing from ancient texts that the technologies, drive, will, and inspiration to create early technological wonders and architectural feats of derring-do came from “above.” Prophets of old spoke of visions where they encountered “flying machines” or beautiful creatures that could not appear to be human upon first glance, and many a modern person has taken this out of the original contexts and decided that extraterrestrial visitors imbued us with the knowledge to break the surly bonds of earth. Stonehenge, the Pyramids, the Hanging Gardens – but especially the Pyramids – were, say these modern charlatans of human ability, not just divinely-inspired but extraterrestrially-wrought, with beings from beyond Gaia and the Solar System instructing us how to cut stone blocks precisely, fit them precisely, and orient them precisely in order to serve some astrological or astronomical purpose and to simultaneously fill our fellow human beings with an awe and reverence at the might of rulers.

The bases the current speculators have for these extra-cosmic pedagogues are thin: primarily, the absence of proof of extraterrestrial intervention, in a coup of detournement, becomes the open door for proof that it could have happened. This is akin to stating that because Toronto did not burn to the ground in 1837 does not mean there is no proof that it did not burn down in 1837. Speculators also point to the continual reverence of Sky and Solar deities across early civilizations, be they Egyptian, Vedic, or Indian. The problem here is a lack of grounding in Jung and Campbell: every early civilization created and subsequently revered solar, lunar, and celestial deities. These are universals across Civilization for the very simple reasons that solar, lunar, and celestial cycles were less understood than other natural phenomena. It sounds daringly trite, but the sky was the last unexplored (in a sense) territory of the human condition only until Montgolfier and the Wright brothers: we as a human society could not conquer it, nor tame it, nor show dominion over the actions. As early civilizations slowly progressed, more was learned about the placement of stars, the movement and phases of the moon, and so on – early mystic and mythological associations were attached to Equinoxes and Solstices, to New Moons and Full Moons, and, especially, to eclipses – which, at least with the ancient Babylonians and Chinese, were eventually categorized and compiled into cyclical predictor charts which have proved largely correct. Otherwise, it is easy to understand the naïve logic of veneration for the celestial: to use Mongolian animism as an example, the Sky itself is the overlord deity – it is largely uniform in color, has a predictable cycle, and is the only natural entity that seems to be ever present, unchanging; the only deity from which a human cannot hide. Conflating, however, the mythical mystery of the sky with the notion that physical bodies came from beyond it to give us knowledge is a grotesque denial of our own shared humanity: ingenuity.

The Old Testament and Vedic Scriptures collectively discuss visions of chariots coming down from the sky with people of import on board, sharing ideas of flying machines or tools or prophecies to which humans must heed. The prophets who wrote down or communicated otherwise these visions, these incidents, must be questioned here as well: long before the days of the FDA and NIMH, food and drink were largely replete with toxins, and those with physical or mental medical problems were, if they were from important families or high breeding, treated as prophets or mystics or soothsayers. Today, we would know these conditions by name: dementia, epilepsy, food poisoning, toxemia, and otherwise. (If they were of low breeding or not of nobility, the result is the same as today: a perceived rambling madman occupying the streetcorners of society) The visions are highly figurative, lucid or quasi-lucid hallucinations brought on by poorly-cooked food, spoiled wine, rancid water, or cerebral degeneration, and, with the floridity of the bastardization of translation and reproduction, we cannot take any of this writing literally unless we too are prepared to subscribe to vindicating and verifying occurrences and conversations had on the brink of ephemeral or permanent insanity as utter and complete truth. Those speculators who search out the early Flying Machines in Vedic scriptures supposedly wrought from the gods (confused with Aliens in this case) are as dangerous, intellectually, as Fundamentalist Dogmatics following the Abrahamic traditions. Those speculators’ mission is not far off, either: convince as many nonbelievers through the use of skepticism applied to logic as a transformative means to permanently embrace and sanctify myth as proof. We have no room for that in the study of history, theology, or science.

As already mentioned, the primary source of irksomeness I see in all of this is the absolute denial of the capabilities for human ingenuity and advancement pro se. To state as though fact and believe it as such that Alien creatures visited human beings in order to instruct them in the ways of creating ancient, massive monuments both subtly and overtly points to a fundamental difference in how I and these speculators approach humanity. We are capable of detecting patterns – even domesticated and wild animals detect and sense patterns – and figuring out ways of prediction. We are capable of demonstrating mathematical and technological advances as means to improve our lot as societies. We are capable of creating a culture and lifeways that record and exhort our past and present. It took a few hundred thousand years, but humans eventually figured out how to create fire. It took tens of thousands of years after that, but after generational observations of growth rates of plants and water cycles, we began cultivating our own food and domesticating animals. It took a while, but we developed mathematics. It took a while, but we figured out how to shelter ourselves from the elements. It took a while, but we eventually started assigning mythical and mystical meanings to the world around us – only after we were able to come up with free time and grow to a critical mass that would allow for a creative class of human beings. To suggest that we as a Civilization would never have the ability to create architectural wonders, be they in total vanity or for sacredness, or make technological leaps, to sanctimoniously state that we needed help, has wide-ranging ramifications on our status as human beings now, providing us with an escape mechanism to blame esoteric entities for our perceived, short-term failures as a society, enabling us to think that we are not capable of discovery and innovation, and giving credence to a mental subjugation that has held back advancement and which allows human beings to settle for less. The centralized message, in a sense, is to be espied no differently from core messages of Organized Religions: you are powerless, and you are simply too stupid to solve your own problems and too naïve and cognitively bankrupt to create anew, because The Beyond is the only realm from which inspiration and safety come. The most disturbing and underlying thought here is that humans are not responsible for their own creations. The implications of this statement are all-encompassing, exempting us from any sort of obligation to ourselves, each other, or our own world. This is a powerful sentiment that allows a belief in the anarchic, an allowance for coldness and total detachment from our own actions, an allowance for complete and total disillusionment and despair in the capabilities of humanity.

This is not to begrudge belief – or, rather, Belief. I do not deny the power of it: it is a powerful solace, one that allows us to seek momentary refuge from the antipode of human innovation and creation: destruction and misery wrought by ourselves against ourselves. No matter how rationally and logically grounded we may be, we encounter moments of pure, visceral, incomprehensible pain or worry or loss – our natural instinct is to find answers, to engineer explanations, to invent solace for ourselves during the darkest moments until we are settled enough to reunite with our cogency. But the dependence upon Belief outside of these austere confines promulgates the acceptance of an unseen, indiscriminate authority through which all our actions must be judged and all our movements monitored. Supplication to this perpetual surveillance in an unhealthy manner again permits us to bolt shut the doors of belief in other human beings, the notion that humans can (and do) work jointly in order to solve, engineer, create, and progress.

As such, it is important for those who yield to the blind authority of extraterrestrial speculation to understand that their common ancestry with irrational Religious Fanaticism is pernicious – both rationally and scientifically. To hear the statement “aliens did not teach the Egyptians how to build the Pyramids” and retort “who is to say they didn’t?” is the basest, lowest form of illogic, of creating proof out of the absence of proof. To elevate extrasolar interventionism as the means of our Civilization’s developmental grace is to adhere to statements precluding our ingenuity and reasoning, and is to allow philosophical bases of anti-humanism to take root. It denies our past as problem-solvers, and our future as problem-solvers.

But, then, maybe the little green men will come back and tell us how to fix all our current broken systems since we’re having a difficult time, collectively, correcting the errors and uniting Civilization to correct the errors, despite plenty of evidence pointing to eventual disasters regarding climate, politics, wealth, access to water, and so on. In the meantime, let’s kick back and wait for outside assistance.