True Believers

Nothing scares me more than a, “True believer.”  Religious fervor is not just limited to fundamentalists of that stripe.  Fundamentalism comes in many shapes and sizes but the end result is the same, a lack of openness to any reasonable discussion about their particular cause.  You know them when you meet them, you can see it in their eyes.

It would seem to me that the world is moving to a more disagreeable state under the current direction.  Opinion holds greater sway than fact and semantics become a bludgeon to mask truth.  It could also be because we are visual creatures an image can turn us towards a darker end than the argument behind it.

Take for instance the image below.  It became one of the most important images in the public eye an causing the condemnation of the US involvement in Vietnam.

There is of course a deeper more human side to this brutal image, involving the death of a family at the hands of the man being shot but that adds an uncomfortable question to what appears to be a very black and white image.  I’ve studied the Vietnam War in detail and I’ve yet to read anything or hear any talk on the war that can give a concrete picture of the whole thing.  In other words, black and white do not exist, it’s all a grey area.

But the individuals and the reasons behind the war were all, “True Believers,” in their cause and as always, million die to satisfy their argument.

If I have one central belief, it’s that most of us on this planet are moderates.  We literally want to just get along with everybody else.  There’s no secret of the true cost of War in regards to lives and economy.  It does not stimulate, it creates privation and loss at every turn and it consumes on a level that is staggering to behold.  If left to our own devices and if we would be able to overcome the deep need within our genes to form social groups with a pecking order or if that social group was not formed on a perceived meritocracy but based on skill set and contribution to the whole.  We might be better off.

Of course this is a utopian ideal and wholly unworkable.  The chips have to be really down for us to all work together.  We need a common enemy.  Funny as it might sound, the common enemy has been put forward a few times in science fiction and in graphic novels.

The Alien Invaders…

And yes, it sounds nuts but Stephen Hawking, just recently said, “A visit by extraterrestrials to Earth would be like Christopher Columbus arriving in the Americas, “which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”  He follows it up with.  “Most extraterrestrial life will be similar to microbes, or small animals but advanced lifeforms may be “nomads, looking to conquer and colonize.”

Now he may be one of the most brilliant minds we’ve ever produced on this planet and he is offering us an amorphous threat based on wild speculation (brilliant as it may be).  We’ve started really big wars for far less, think of it as a universal equivalent of MAD.  The Alien Overlords are coming, we need to be ready for them when they get here.  Do we want another Pearl Harbor of Global dimension?

See we’re not the problem here, it’s those stinking Aliens.

They don’t look like us.

They don’t think like us.

It’s all take, take, take, with them.

We should be prepared brothers and sisters.  If they want this planet, they should be prepared to pay in blood, their green blood.

But we need to prepare ourselves now, while there’s still time.  Because they’re coming.

Believe it.