bro i don’t care if aliens are real i want to be able to go to the dentist.
@katierose via Twitter
Can we talk about the aliens?
Early this summer, David Grusch, a former intelligence officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, declared under oath that the U.S. is concealing a decades-long program to retrieve and reverse engineer unidentified flying objects (aka UFOs) – or what are officially known as “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAPs). He testified before Congress that the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human activity” since the 1930’s and is currently harboring alien spacecraft.
National Air and Space Intelligence Center officer Jonathan Grey had this to add: “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone.”
Aliens exist y’all.
This ought to be life-changing, mind blowing news. We should be shocked or terrified or even existentially hopeful that this will forever alter the trajectory of humankind.
But on one seems to care. The news was met with an apathetic, collective shrug. Initially, I assumed most people just probably didn’t believe it. Neither political party seems to trust the government these days. One meme by @missmayn joked that “aliens are gonna be super confused when they show up threatening to overthrow our leaders and we’re all stoked and offer to help.”
But perhaps we’re just underwhelmed by alien life because we are so overwhelmed by this life.
We find ourselves in a uniquely stressful time to exist and have no more bandwidth for trauma. If we were to catalog our major worries, aliens would probably fall at the bottom of the list behind climate change, post-global pandemic exhaustion, health care costs, mountainous school debt, systemic racism, gun violence, whatever fresh hell AI is bringing, and fascist-like laws that only benefit rich, white, heteronormative males. As @goldngodsdesire posted on Instagram, “Aliens are real” yeah, I know, lower the cost of living.”
Trauma exhaustion is a real thing. We can only process so much stress before our brains tap out and we dissociate. It’s our oldest survival instinct. We have so many immediate concerns – like how will I pay rent and the grocery bill this month? – we don’t have the mental capacity to worry about all the potential threats – like being abducted and probed by little green men.
Fight or flight is evolutionarily beneficial, but humans just aren’t built to stay there long-term. At some point, our system shuts down. When we don’t have the energy to care, the dorsal vagal parasympathetic system takes over, activating the reptilian instinct to freeze, sleep, or just disengage from everything around us. We might take to our beds or numb our worries with alcohol, carbohydrates, or Netflix binging.
My poet soul wants so badly to be awed and inspired by the idea that we are not alone in the universe. But even I cannot contemplate the cosmos right now. I have too much else on my psychological plate.
@_graceduah said it best when she tweeted this: “Are aliens going to fix inflation, cancel student debt, end worker exploitation, pay any of these bills, turn the temp down on this planet; and all around bring happiness to me and my friends miserable lives? No? Then yeah- they can get tf.”
