The truth is out there?

All you Avatar crazies, is it true that an alien is watching over your reactions?

By Rikaza Hassan

The elections have left me seriously annoyed and no doubt many others too. Even apolitical people like moi have got caught up in the distasteful enterprise that is Sri Lankan politics. “Was it Dutugemunu or mason bass that built Ruwanweliseya” asks a government supporter passionately. “Why did the flyovers cost so much per square foot, the most expensive in the world,” replies a diehard green vehemently. “What about the arms deal?” “Didn’t you read the ad in our newspaper last week, it’s all a hoax.” And so it goes. And then there are the bets, in one case that would involve people coming to work (for one whole week) sans underwear. Whatever the outcome, it’s going to be an eventful week, next week.
In any case I like many others cannot wait for the 27 th, when this is all over. Or so I thought until I heard on Wednesday that there will be no live telecast of the final election results (how like Pavlov’s dogs denied). Bummer! And while a few years ago the thought of curfew would have excited the hell out of me, this time round I merely worry about how we’ll get these (feature) pages done by deadline time.
In any case, with no fun scheduled to happen in the first half of the coming week at least, we decided to take a somewhat offbeat track this Sunday. Hence LAKBIMAnEWS spent the latter half of the past week asking a number of people about extra terrestrial beings, yes aliens, and in James Cameron’s head,blue and 10ft. tall.

Definite opinions

Aliens and extra terrestrials are not something that oft comes up for discussion in Sri Lanka, so I was quite surprised by the number of people who had definite opinions on the matter.
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So, questioned Fahima, “When you die what happens to that [life force] energy? Where does that energy go?” before answering “I believe that it goes to another planet to become another being.” A different take on panspermia, she suggested that the soul or life force planet hops, at each juncture giving rise to some form of life. “We’re not [intellectually] developed enough to understand it. But we can’t simply dismiss it altogether and claim that there are no aliens.”
“All archaic religions talk about angels, and so they too must be a form of extra terrestrials. Muslims say that when you recite zikr (a prayer), angels are present, but we can’t see them. If we can believe in angels then we must open our mind to others also,” she continued.
And while people all over the world are not comfortable discussing life in outer space, generally speaking — it is still regarded as somewhat loony. This was not always the case argued Sajitha, a teacher by profession.
“Belief in aliens was not an alien concept at all well into the 20th century. It was only after the many unmanned space probes that were sent to explore the other planets in our solar system found no evidence that the average Joe’s conviction tempered. There was a time that even the Sun was considered to house extra terrestrial life. Even now we’ve got SETI and many astrobiologists have no reservation in saying that there must be at least alien microorganisms if not complex creatures in the rest of the universe. The late Carl Sagan for instance said that it was nearly impossible for other intelligent life to not exist in the universe,” she commented.
Even though the present generations see the Roswell incident and Area 51 as the precursors to the whole UFO phenomenon, Sajitha countered that it has been part and parcel of human civilisation since the time of the ancients. “The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chinese, pretty much all the ancient civilisations had belief systems that inculcated in some way extra terrestrial life forms, usually attached to the supernatural. Though maybe not the Greeks with their geocentricity,” she chuckled. Even orthodox religion has a place for aliens and intelligent life forms at that she added. “The Jewish Talmund says there are 18,000 worlds. The Islamic Quran proclaims that Allah is the Lord of ‘all’ worlds. And the Hindus talk about many universes with many sentient beings.”
Nature lover Prabath was on the same page as Sajitha but had nothing but disdain for James Cameron’s version in his groundbreaking Avatar. “I hated the movie. They were not at all realistic. It was like a Walt Disney film. I fell asleep halfway through the movie,” he claimed leaving even myself shocked. How can a nature lover not fall in love with the Pandoran landscape? He replied that the aliens in the Alien series were much more realistic. Acid spewing aliens that breed inside humans? “Yeah, yeah whatever,” he replied before spewing “I hate Avatar.” As for the concept of aliens as invaders, conquerors, destroyers, a theme that has been predominantly echoed throughout in the alien film genre including Alien, until Avatar turned it on its head, stated Prabath “We’re looking at if from our point of view, our mentality. It is what we would do if we had the technology. That’s all.”
Much more in tune with our off the beaten track kind of path... “Aliens are much more intelligent than humans and thus have no intention of invading earth or destroying it. They are of course watching over us. We’re like the bacteria that [Alexander] Fleming left in a petri dish, contaminating ourselves with penicillin as we destroy the earth. Like a biological experiment. Question is did they put us in the dish or not,” stated the ever serious Y, voicing a thought along the lines of Clarke’s Odyssey trilogy.
Totally caught up with the believers, I almost completely forgot about the sceptics and there sure were more than a few of them as well. Snicker, snicker, hmph!

Tis cool

“Aliens are bullshit man!” laughed out one. “I can’t believe you’re asking us this. Have you watched too much of X-Files reruns? Fallen in love with Fox Mulder? Is mould growing in your brain? Do you fancy yourself as Dana Scully? She was hot!” burst out another in rapid fire. All jokes aside, they were not totally the morons they pretended to be. “There has been absolutely no real or scientific evidence of alien sightings, alien landings, ships, abductions or aliens themselves. And a grainy photograph doesn’t cut it. And just because there is evidence of water having flown in Mars once upon a time or there is ice in the polar caps of the Moon does not mean that there is life out there,” remarked Wickrama succinctly. Or as Chethiya put it: “My mother says I can be whatever I want to be, achieve whatever I want. That does not mean that I will ever swim faster than Michael Thorpe or be as successful as Bill Gates. Just because there is water or carbon or nitrogen or an atmosphere doesn’t mean there is life. I’m not trying to be a Creationist, but ‘can’ is not ‘is’.”
But not everyone is that straightforward. For as Alfred Lambremont Webre wrote in the Seattle Exopolitics Examiner, Avatar, is “the harsh exopolitical reality of Earth’s military-industrial complex and permanent war economy ongoing secret colonization and exploitation of our solar system and beyond” as well as a “case study of what may be occurring right now in our own solar system as the black budget war-mentality of Earth expands its dualistic, exploitative and militaristic policies into outer space behind a screen of official secrecy and constitutional rogue.”
Avatar is set in Pandora, a moon of a gas giant planet in the system of Alpha Centauri A, a bright star said to be similar to our sun. And thus argues Webre the existence of Pandora is feasible. He goes on further that the 1979 Moon Treaty which was not ratified by any country with space exploration missions or plans for such, and which provided safeguards against the exploitation of all bodies in the solar system, including resources and populations, is a danger sign. In brief, he believes that the US among others implants UFO/extra terrestrial stories to cover up the fact that they are in fact presently running secret military-industrial operations in at least the Moon and Mars.
Sceptic, believer or just dunno-don’t-care; whether the truth is out there, in our minds or inscribed on an ancient stone; whatever man, ‘tis cool.