>> I think any animal adapts to it's enviroment and humans are no
>> different. If things carry on evolving the way they have in the
>past 40
>> years it will mean more people working in jobs where they're bodys are
>> used less and they're minds are used more. This would lead to an
>> enlargement of the brain and a reduction in the size of the body to
>> compensate. The result will look remorkably similar to the aliens a
>lot
>> of people claim to have seen. Could our future generations have
>already
>> invented time travel?
And Kal Alastor Sameul Cain followed:
>That is strange, I have been thinking along the same lines just
>recently. I even tried to write a fantasy story based on the idea. I
>don't suppose you have any ideas as to why there trying to get
>children from us. I geuss it doesn't really matter to the virus but
>its a valid question.
Valid indeed. Reposted from 10/9/97:
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Alien Meme Evolution
by Cap'n Piledriver, Ph.D. (a.k.a. Prof. Tim)
So what is it the Aliens are trying to tell us? What is their message? And
what can we learn about ourselves from the Alien Meme and Myth?
Let's start with a little history:
The first modern UFO was seen in 1947, fifty years ago, over Mount Rainier.
Three sickle shaped silver objects caught in the light of a setting sun. It
was the beginning. But these strange objects were not content to keep to the
skies for long. Baffling unwary pilots quickly lost its thrill and soon
these unearthly weightless ships were landing in the wheat fields of middle
America.
Like the first tentative steps of a child, the Aliens would venture from
their ships for just a moment, or two, to dazzle and dumbfound the amazed
hapless farmer in his field. This was our first contact, fleeting though it
was, with these inhuman creatures. These first steps led, as they always do,
to more daring and daring explorations on the Aliens part.
As the Cold War rumbled into full swing and middle America filled its idle
time planning fallout shelters, the Aliens added a new element to their act.
No longer content to simply appear to the odd Farmer Joe, giving him an
amusing story to tell his fishing buddies, these Aliens, for reasons we will
understand more fully later, began to communicate. At first the messages,
often sent telepathically into the minds of the startled humans, were
simple, reassuring words: "We come in peace" or "Be yea not afraid."
But by the sixties, as Kennedy and Khrushchev flexed their manliness at one
another on the world stage, the Aliens tone became a more somber one. We
were a young and violent race that must take care not to destroy ourselves.
We had harnessed the power of the sun, but lacked the maturity and composure
to know how to use it wisely. "We would have to learn how to control
ourselves," the Aliens warned, "or they would do it for us!"
But by the late sixties and early seventies the Aliens warnings had mellowed
with the times. To the acid addled flower power generation the aliens new
messages of peace and love and understanding and connection were of no
surprise. Their prophesies that we were all one children of a single
universe, brothers in space separated only by the void between stars, went
down easy on the steps of Berkeley and the sidewalks of Haight-Ashbury. It
was what we had suspected all along, after all, wasn't it?
But these days of peace, love and hippie-shit were soon to come a close, and
them the mouths of the Aliens as well it would seem. Their tongues falling
silent as the seventies came to a end, without explanation or reason. Had we
done something to offend their delicate natures? What had caused these once
talkative Aliens to fall into a bitter silence once again? What so perturbed
the myth to send it on this frightening new course?
With the coming of the Reagan and Thatcher governments saga of the Aliens
took on a dark and ominous tone. These unholy years are known, among those
who study such obscure trivia, as "the anal probe years."
While Ronny lost himself in the presidency and a culture turned its
idealistic eyes to the harsh realities of cold hard cash, the Aliens began
their cruel task. Sinister and without warning this new class of Aliens
found their pleasure in the abduction of unwary victims. Often performing
upon them hideous unspeakable experiments. Taken from their quiet homes in
the dead of night and strapped down to sterile examination tables inside
unfamiliar and unnerving extraterrestrial laboratories, they were poked and
prodded in every conceivable manner. (And even in some ways that only a
distinctly foreign and un-human mind could begin to understand.) Countless
thousands were so abducted, taken in their sleep, defiled by Alien fingers
without cause or explanation, and returned using as yet unheard of
technologies, to that very point in time at which they were so rudely taken.
The end of the eighties saw a new bent to this, now common and sadistic,
story. The Aliens began to take our women. In their secret starbound
chambers they would impregnate our sisters and mothers. Bringing them to
term and removing the strange mutant half-alien half-human babies before
returning them to the earth. Often the Aliens would give the mother a
glimpse of the child before setting her back down on earth; they looked
quite human in many cases, surprisingly. Some times they would baffle the
mother by displaying one human and one alien offspring side-by-side in a
strange sort of show-and-tell. But what were they trying to tell us?
These abductions continued in silence, unabated, until the early nineties.
Once again, without rhyme or reason the Alien's story took another turn and,
some five or six years ago, these cosmic travelers vale of secrecy was
lifted once again. This time the Aliens were more tight lipped. But the new
message they now told, it seems, would prove to have ramifications beyond
the simplest of human understandings. As they spoke the whole history of the
Alien myth thus stood quaking, waiting to be rewritten.
They were not from the stars at all, these big brained, gray skinned,
sexless, waif-like creatures now informed us. They were not, as we had
assumed, far off travelers from another planet. They were not, in fact,
travelers through space at all. But rather travelers through time; travelers
from the future. Yes, these Aliens were in fact our future selves!
Now this should come as no surprise to us, really. How could we have been so
vain and egotistical to think that an advanced race of beings would travel
light years across the cosmos just to study us? But if they were us... If
they were ourselves some thousands of years hence,... Well, that's just
anthropology, isn't it?
And this crucial turn in the progress of the Alien myth and its memes, sheds
light on all the previous years as well. Those first tentative steps from
their time machines, afraid to venture too far, their emphatic warnings not
to be foolish and destroy ourselves/themselves, the message that we are all
brothers descended from the same ancestors. Even the "anal probe years" make
sense now, in this new light. Like early archeologists who destroyed whole
sights in their hurried quests for the ruins of a lost Troy, these future
humans seem not to have lost the talent for leaving ruin and destruction in
their wake as well.
But what of the abducted mothers and their half-human/half-alien mutant
children? What can we make of this? What part did they breed out of
themselves, ourselves, in their quest for technology, that they now must
return to reclaim those genes from the DNA of their own ancestors? Do they
bring back with them this warning: Do not become as us! All head and eyes,
frail and sexless, coldly performing their "duties", experimenting without
mercy despite the terrified screams of their primitive and animalistic
subjects. What did they lose that we still possess? That they now long to
regain by what-ever means necessary?
But, my children, we no longer need fear these Alien future selves. For we
are no longer the hapless victims of some advanced race come down from the
stars. We are no longer merely bit players in this Alien saga-- for ours is
the starring role. It is not just the Aliens story any more. It is our story
as well.
What they are, what they will become descends from us, you see. They are not
in control of us, rather it is we, who are in control of them! We are in
control of the Alien myth, for it is our story, ours to tell, ours to
interpret and, more importantly, ours to create!
And so, brothers and sisters, isn't it about time we started to tell it like
it is!
Power to the People!
Long live the Aliens!
. . . that we all are.
~ Cap’n Piledriver, Ph.D
proftim@speakeasy.org