This article appeared in the October issue of Phactum, the newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking. It was reprinted from the February 1997 issue of The Skeptic, the newsletter of the North Texas Skeptics and is copyright (c) Mike Combs, 1996.
-- by Mike Combs
Rented "The Arrival" last night. Pretty slick flick. The suspense works, the science was plausible, and the movie has way- cool computer-generated aliens.
For those who haven't seen it, the plot is this: The aliens were among us in human form and (as is always the case in such situations) they were covertly trying to take us over. Specifically, they were dumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere to speed up the Greenhouse Effect. It was their version of terraforming; an attempt to make the Earth less suitable for us and more to their liking.
"We're not doing anything to you that you're not already doing to yourselves," one of the human-guised aliens sneeringly tells the hero. "All we're doing is accelerating the process. What it will take you a hundred years to do, we will do in ten."
This got me thinking. Suppose I were a nasty alien from a technologically superior race, and I was looking with alarm at this planet populated with homosap's who are breeding like mad and growing more technologically powerful each day. If I had the ability to infiltrate their society and covertly mess with their culture, what would I do to try and keep them in their place and out of my neighborhood?
Encouraging the widespread acceptance of addictive drugs would be a good start. Numb those disturbingly well-developed brains with chemicals.
Hey, we're off to a great start. Now we do everything we can to encourage paranoia. If we can get these carbon-based units to believe everything's controlled by a shadowy group, then they can take comfort that whenever they fail, it's not their fault. They can't get ahead because of The Conspiracy. This will be particularly effective with races which have been treated badly by others in the past; it will interfere with their struggle for equality.
Breaking the Earthers' will is all well and good, but specifically I want them to stay out of space. I would obscure the immediate social and economic benefits of space-travel and suppress all knowledge of its potential future benefits. The last thing I want is those big-ugly-bags-of-mostly-water tapping into the energy and resources of space, or proliferating in space habitats. I'd start a campaign which asks the question, "Which are we going to spend our money on, space or helping humanity?" as if the two issues weren't intimately connected. I want to keep the Earth-Worms planet-bound; forever if possible.
But I don't just want them to give up on space. I want them to discard science and technology altogether. Knowledge is power and I don't want them to have any. I would instill in their youth such a contempt for science that they torment those who choose a scientific education. Fewer will be willing to go that route. The fewer scientists those grubby hairless apes turn out, the better. I would also encourage religious groups to go into the science classroom and to give battle over the teaching of basic scientific facts.
This is starting to work, but we're just not getting the message out effectively enough to suit me. I would look at a planet bathed in innumerable TV transmissions, and would know exactly where my forces needed to come into play. Hollywood, here I come.
I would try to ensure that the entire population watches television, instead of reading books. Books can put profound ideas into their misshapen heads, television can only titillate. I would ramp-down their attention spans, until it was insufficient to let them learn anything of worth.
Manipulation of television could further our earlier plan for making science nerdy. Portray scientists as laughable, abnormal social misfits who can certainly cause lots of trouble, but who can never participate in the solution. If anything, make them an impediment to saving humanity. This will have the pleasing effect of reducing the risk of real scientists going off and saving humanity. It would be most convenient if the human race would destroy itself and save us the bother. Scientific knowledge is the biggest threat to this scenario.
But it's that rapidly-advancing technology which might lead the bipeds-with-the-big-heads to build star-ships. Portray technology as the cause of the problem, but never the fix. Since in all likelihood it's the large multinational corporations which would develop the technology to build those accursed starships, use television to promote the belief that corporations are the root-cause of all evil in the world, rather than political avarice, religious and racial intolerance, and mental illness. As long as the dramas are more entertaining than the evening news, maybe the humans will never learn any better.
My ideal TV program should really push that "hidden conspiracy" thing. It would have two investigative characters: One gravitates to the most outlandish, paranormal explanation and is almost invariably right; one prefers the most rational, scientific explanation and is almost invariably wrong. Make the latter a poor advocate of the rationalist point of view. I would make the show so slickly-produced, and so genuinely entertaining, that even those opposed to its philosophy would still feel impelled to watch. Maybe we'll get some converts.
This show would go a long way towards encouraging a belief in magic amongst these savages, which certainly works to my advantage. After all, when you enter into the midst of a primitive tribe, you only have to worry about the tribesmen armed with spears. The ones armed with voodoo are at the bottom of your list of worries.
But there would be one show I would hate above all others, and would utterly destroy if I could: Star Trek.
Star Trek portrays a positive future in which that disgusting race has quit squabbling amongst themselves, and has worked together to solve their global problems. Although its science bears little resemblance to reality, and it frequently descends into meaningless technobabble, Star Trek is still dangerous because the characters' scientific knowledge is viewed as an asset, not a liability.
On my ideal show, I'm able to reinforce every week the idea that there's no use in investigating the universe. Try as you might, you can never solve the mystery because The Conspiracy won't let you. Each episode ends with the protagonists no closer to the truth than they ever were, only with more befuddling mysteries before them. I'm hoping that with enough seasons of this, Earthlings will eventually decide that examining the universe is not even worth bothering with.
But then here's Roddenberry's evil spawn contradicting my message. Each episode ends with questions answered. Every week, mysteries yield to scientific investigation. The universe is ultimately a knowable place. I don't want the Terran Pigs to find out about that!
Worse, the characters in Star Trek frequently use technology to solve problems and to help people. This is in direct opposition to the message I'm getting out in every other show on the air. We can't stand for this.
Worst of all, the show provides a concrete vision of a tomorrow where humanity is cruising about the galaxy in starships. That's absolutely the last thing we want. Whatever the Earth Scum can visualize, they can eventually create, if they want it badly enough.
But wait, maybe we could infiltrate Star Trek. Maybe we could arrange for an episode on Next Generation where it's revealed that Warp Drive damages space. This would bring the show more into line with the theme of my other shows: Technology can only hurt the natural world. Best to suppress it whenever possible.
I could arrange an episode of Voyager where a scientist has to surrender her rational view, and embrace a backward planet's mysticism in order to save the life of a dear friend.
The best move would be to invent a villainous race of grotesque half-men/half-machines. The message would be clear: Keep technology at arm's length, lest it transform you into a pasty zombie. The last thing I need is for these mildly- intelligent monkeys to hit on the idea of putting chips into their brains. The result might be a new, advanced form of intelligence capable of doing things neither man nor machine could accomplish alone. After all, such an intelligence could compete with my form of intelligence.
Hey, "The Arrival" was right after all. Evil aliens wouldn't do anything to us that we aren't already doing to ourselves.
This is news that should cause us great cheer.
"Are you crazy?" you ask. "Isn't this all terrible?"
Not really. If there really was a more-advanced race of hateful aliens in our midst and they wanted us out of the way, we would be screwed. Screwed as were the American Indians when Columbus and his crew showed up. Screwed as were the Aztecs when Cortez and company arrived.
But if we are, after all, only doing it to ourselves, then at least we have a choice.
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