If my typos get excessive, mind you, the lap top and I went out to the café to work yesterday and had peanut butter. I practically have to stand on the ‘a’ to get it to work.

Such is life, I think there were also crunchy bits in the bottom of my bag that have worked their way down into the keyboard and every so often (like with “k”) there is this nasty crunching sound and then everything is ok.

One of the side bar discussions that started yesterday was “what do you think an Alien would look like?” and this is kind of nonsensical and yet, as revealing and important as the whole 2012 discussion.

What do you think an Alien would look like? And do you find the image you create in your mind frightening or comforting?

Or do you think no such possibility exists at all?

They have found about 300 new planets over the past week or so that exists beyond our solar system. Extrapolation of numbers means the chance that an “earthlike” planet exists are high.

Why do we assume that Aliens would be like us?

Why do we assume they would need anything in the same way that we would?

Why do we assume that there would be anything different between us at all?

The prevalence of Alien theories arose during WWII and the beginning of the nuclear age. The hypothesis that life exists elsewhere has been around for a long time, but the more we look back (or forward) and see things that we (culturally) cannot understand how they were done (pyramids, Mayan calendars) the more we ascribe them to essentially “super humans” that we could not possibly be.

We even, culturally, give them exaggerated human features – the features that we both fear and recognize are so intrinsic to the human experience. They have large eyes (the windows to the soul, to see), huge heads (to contain their so much better then ours brain), a flawless sense of reason and logic (having triumphed over our messy emotions) and long, long fingers (the human hand exaggerated, all the better to make brilliant things).

In our mythology of Aliens the strong thread is that they come in peace (but want something from us), peace is misunderstood and destruction ensues (usually triumphed over by an underdog – even in human terms – hero).

We continue on thinking that these highly advanced beings a) have a need or curiousity to study us and b) for all their advancement have not managed to resolve basic issues that we grapple with  the destruction of resources, over population, war.

I find it interesting that we have made of the concept of Aliens a mutated and exaggerated image of both the best and worst of ourselves.

In movies, with better makeup, we have expanded our visual imagining of Aliens to include more diverse forms, but it always returns to the image of the most frightening Alien being the most like us.

That is what made the Alien in “Aliens” so frightening is the character was so tied to the very human realm of “motherhood.”

Who is to say that we would even remotely understand an Aliens motivation?

What do I think an Alien looks like? Its like asking me what face I would put to God, I have no idea because I realize that my experience does not even remotely allow for any type of imagination to reach out to even begin to picture it.  Honestly, I doubt if I met an Alien that I would even recognize them because my human experience would demand that I place the experience in some kind of framework so I did not go insane.

Do I think that there are other lifeforms out there, hands down of course. But I am more concerned with this one.

I think, when I look back on all the Alien movies I have seen, the one – to me – that best represented what could be, was K-Pac. Where even in the movie you are left with the question of “is he an alien or is he just crazy?” because that is a core question, could we ever recognize what is different? Would we ever allow something to be different from us? And what would happen to us, if we discovered they were different or differently abled, but not capable of either destroying us or saving us?

Ok…coffee and it is all spreadsheets today

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