Aliens are just like us.
© 20th Century Fox

Related Links

0

The Manic Maniac: Why We Want to Believe in E.T.

For two weeks, Jeff Peckman was piping on and on about the "alien video," Stan Romanek's filmed encounter with an extraterrestrial being bobbing outside his window. While we all knew this was simply another farce, I couldn't help but become curious. Sightings happen all the time, don't they? As recently, even, as a few months ago in west Texas, where a series of lights were seen independently by three groups of people. But Peckman's story and, subsequently, Romanek's video, seemed to have an exceptional degree of intrigue. Maybe it's because this sighting received broad media coverage, giving it more substance. Maybe it's because most claims center on UFOs (a.k.a. planes, stars and dirty camera lenses)—rarely has anyone had the gumption to produce actual, live alien footage. Or maybe it was due to the passion with which Peckman effused his extraterrestrial edict—there wasn't an if, and or but about it. This, Peckman said, was the real deal, verified by a Denver-area film expert who lives with his mother, eats Cheetos for dinner and maintains a shrine to Gary Gygax. I've gotta say, my interest was piqued. And then came the video.

Originally, we were supposed to see the full, four-minute clip of the little guy peering in through Romanek's window. But after Romanek sold the video rights (shocker) to a documentary film company, we the people were restricted to about 45 seconds of something closer to clever animation than an extraterrestrial life form. (We'll have to wait with bated breath for the release of the documentary, and the additional 3:15.)

The creature in the video has an oblong head, big black eyes and is about 4 feet tall, judging by the size of its head and neck. Yawn. I'm still confused as to why these contactees, abductees and conspiracy mongers insist on applying humanoid (and sometimes animal) characteristics to aliens. We're to assume that life across the universe takes on a consistent form? The only evolutionary credit these aliens are given is a large cranium, implying that inside it lies a large brain. Apparently, that's the only plausible explanation for deciphering space travel and, maybe, interdimensional worm holing. Like so many things, we confine our imagination and conceptualization of life elsewhere within the limits of what we know to be true right here. We expect everything across this universe and the next to adhere to our definitions of gravity, molecular makeup and the fine-structure constant.

Even in popular science, it can happen. Take the recent discovery of the "superEarth" system of three earth-like planets orbiting the star HD40307 about 42 light years from here. Astronomers have said the planets are too close to their sun to support life. Who's life? Ours? Or are we immediately ruling out the possibility of any life form existing there, simply because it's too hot for our physiology? Why couldn't Peckman and Romanek's alien live there?

That alien probably couldn't live there because it's too much like us. It's too much like us to the extent that I was disappointed. I knew that it wasn't real. I didn't have to see the video. But still, I wanted it to be real. And you did, too. In that way, we're not so different from Peckman and Romanek.

We'd like there to be something, but despite the approaches of discovery, both fantastical—those guys—and pragmatic—SETI—we aren't given much to hold onto. But it doesn't stop us from believing. It's why the search for extraterrestrial life, an ostensibly atheist practice, is closer to religion than either side of the aisle would like to admit. Both seek a higher being, a higher power, evidence of something bigger and older and more powerful than us. And both attempt to make it immediate and tangible, something that we can see, touch and, more importantly, interact with.

It's said that God created man in his image, but isn't it the other way around? Just like Peckman and Romanek and so many filmmakers, writers and stargazers before them have done with aliens. They're doing this for a reason, albeit an unconscious one. Imagine if the supernatural were simply a cloud, gas matter, maybe a beam of light or, hell, something we can't even fathom because it's composed of elements that only exist in a world parallel to ours—but it's still a thinking, functioning entity. How would the common man be able to understand and interpret that? How would one suggest the everyman communicate with something so far-fetched? All of sudden prayer (God) and mathematics (aliens) seem like an impossible scenario, like trying to speak Mandarin to a deaf caveman.

So, before we dismiss Peckman and Romanek as crazies, maybe it isn't their belief that's skewed, just their presentation. It's why, say, Carl Sagan never assigned extraterrestrial life an identity or form. In the moments that he did conjecture about life beyond, he manifested something that took our form, but was otherwise shapeless and formless and that, like us, sought an answer. The problem isn't with seeking an answer or attempting to document truth—that's eternal. The problem is being so arrogant as to believe the answer is like us. That's why I can't take this alien video seriously. But it's also why I'll be just as curious when the next one comes out.