Maybe the Sky is Really Green, and We’re Just Colourblind:
On Zapping, Close Encounters and the Commercial Break

 

 

What Boeing engineers do after retiring, 2010

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Close Encounter?

 

The contemporary condition of what it is to be human calls into question the relevance of politics and reality, one that has collapsed under the weight of an information overload and mass deception. Paranoia suddenly seems the only sensible state of being, where it is easier to ponder the end of the world than to imagine viable political alternatives. J. Allen Hynek—the person who coined the term "close encounters"—has pointed out that from the vantage point of the thirtieth century, our knowledge of the universe may appear quite different: "We suffer, perhaps, from temporal provincialism, a form of arrogance that has always irritated posterity."79 The question then should not be "is there intelligent life out there?", but rather "is there intelligent life on Earth?" After all, wouldn't it be us who are actually the aliens?