ON FLIGHTS OF FANTASY

By Kam Zarrabi
August 2023

Running on a treadmill you don't get anywhere, but the physical exercise is beneficial for your cardiovascular conditioning. Similarly, resting on your recliner and focusing on a Tao or Zen sounding phrase and trying to figure out what wisdom message is hidden therein, also exercises the mind, especially when, no matter how you try, you don't get anywhere!

Vagueness, bordering on meaninglessness, offers a hell of a lot more for the mind to chew on than any straight out message or wisdom statement. The vaguer a concept is, the more the mind can create and visualize its own imageries of some hidden message. And interestingly, when no answer is found, no matter how the mind tries, whatever is hidden is perceived to attain a higher stature deserving of even more effort to decipher: A vicious circle of sorts.

Many enthusiasts searching for the true essence of reality, whatever the hell that actually means, believe that to break through the mind's cocoon and transcend into a higher state of consciousness they must seriously meditate for long hours, and if they can, indulge in some mind-liberating, perhaps even illegal, concoctions.

The fact is that plain and simple to understand stuff is never as interesting as the thought provoking and difficult to digest concepts, especially those concepts that appear as meaningless as, for example: Why two plus two equals four? I am sure many visionary philosophers, Gurus, Sufis and shamans can spend hours giving you their version of the answer to that question by making it even more convoluted than it is!

But that's all OK; the purpose of this kind of seemingly fruitless pastime is, as I have mentioned above, to exercise the mind, similar to jogging on a treadmill.

This is exactly why the fuzzy domain of metaphysics attracts so many who seek an escape from the boredom of everyday nine-to-five routine. And this, again, is why fiction and fantasy novels far outsell the nonfiction publications, and why the more outrageous or unlikely a story is, the stronger its attraction to draw everyone's attention.

The latest preoccupation in our major news media these days, beside the usual exaggerations and distortions, relates to the effort by the Congress to have the Pentagon clarify the cases of the UFOs, or the UFPs (P for phenomena) as the military prefers to call them, as have been observed and reported by military pilots for over ten years. Of course, the sighting of these unidentified flying phenomena, from the flying saucers in the 1950s and 60s, to the abductions and disappearances of people, etc., have triggered speculations among the public throughout the world about visitations by outer-worldly creatures to our home planet. Cashing in on the understandable sense of curiosity and indeed anticipation by the public, photographs, almost always inexplicably out of focus, along with many unverifiable tall tales have been published. Some of the equally improbable motion picture scenarios have become blockbuster successes; perhaps the most interesting among them, which even I personally enjoyed watching, was the Close Encounter of the Third Kind, where unlike many other films depicting the "aliens" as intruders with ill intents, the weird looking strangers were kind and very likeable!

My own background, I have to admit, is fundamentally scientific, but I do also have a great appreciation for speculating into the realm of fantasy, the unknown or even the unknowable, which adds flavor to any curious, exploring imagination. Nevertheless, I have always been quite skeptical about the probability of extraterrestrial visitations to our earthly domain by alien intelligences.

Many, if not most, photographs of these co-called alien crafts have been debunked as simple earthly objects such as street lamps, Frisbees, birds, or even delta or V shaped military aircraft seen at special angles.

The Air Force has always been experimenting with new aircraft designs, which are quite understandably confidential for obvious reasons. Some of the now operational stealth bombers and fighter aircraft, when viewed at certain angles, do appear so out of the ordinary that a layperson with a touch of imagination might interpret them as some alien flying object.

As we all know, many experimental objects that are intended for orbital or outer space missions carry live animals, from hamsters to monkeys, to test the various effects of G forces, cosmic radiations, etc. So when the Congresswoman asked one of the witnesses in the recent hearing regarding the UFOs about the biological nature of the remains in one of these objects that had been recovered and kept secret, the "expert" witness quite cleverly responded with a smirk that the remains were biologically non-human! Wow: What earth-shattering revelation!! C'mon: Aren't monkeys and hamsters also non-human biologics? The first non-human biological creature sent to earth's orbit was the Russian dog, Laika, aboard the Soviet Sputnik back in 1957.

No doubt, the Air Force and perhaps even the US Navy are experimenting with various military gadgets, which must remain top secret for understandable reasons. And no doubt, other countries, China and Russia, for instance, are engaged in the same kind of technologies, and their equally secretive creations may drop down in our lands or waters on occasion, which would be retrieved for analyses by our military under secretive conditions.

It is, of course, necessary here to understand the difference between possibilities and probabilities: Anything is possible, even something as crazy as an ice cube inside the sun's core; and any imaginative "science" writer could come up with some weird explanation for that, with an end-note: Can you prove it wrong? Now, good luck trying to prove a negative! But, what is the degree of probability of the existence of an ice cube at the sun's core? I'd say ZERO, with a great degree of confidence.

What are the chances or the probability of alien intelligences visiting our planet from some other solar system? Before answering that question, let us reflect on some important points:
1-It is a fact that the ingredients responsible for the development of life on earth do exist throughout the universe.
2-It is also known that other planets within the Milky Way Galaxy and beyond do exist, the kinds that have the right prerequisites to harbor life of some form or the other.
3-All "life" is, of course, not the kind we are most interested in; we are keen on "intelligent life," which does need some more clear definition. A form of tree with roots in the ground, i.e. immobile, is not something we would be concerned with. But a mobile intelligent species, whether composed of carbon-based or even silica-based molecules, should be of interest.
4-Any such creature must be endowed with our kind of psychological orientation to have the human-like passion for exploration and the overambitious urge to break out of its own domain.
5-Why would any such creatures that have advanced far enough technologically to gain the ability to travel in the interstellar space for light-year distances have a reason to visit our planet?
6-Aren't we simply projecting our own dreams and psychological impulses; i.e., what we humans would do if we ever gain the technologies to search the cosmos in our space ships for whatever reason?

I am all for dreaming big and letting my imagination fly to wherever its fantasy takes it; but I do have a rather unpleasant thought: How likely is it that in many hundreds of thousands of years from now we might reach the philosophical maturity to appreciate the ultimate futility and the meaninglessness of existence, and simply write ourselves off as just an accidental glitch in cosmic history? Might not that also be the reason for the unlikeliness of advanced alien beings ever venturing into our tiny planet: what the hell for!?