Day 133

A couple years ago, I read a good article about the sudden influx of UFO "sightings" in the mid-1940s and beyond. The story suggested that these sightings were merely a figment of the public's imagination in response to our surroundings at the time, specifically in the United States.

For example, we were engaged in a war. And this was not just any war, it was a WORLD war.  And not only that: it was the second one!  Furthermore, the war was effectively ended with the use of a weapon that killed thousands in one fell swoop. In fact, it literally erased thousands of people from the face of the earth in an instant. To make matters worse, once World War II ended, the United States immediately entered another "conflict": the Cold War. This wasn't about weapons (at least, it wasn't about using them) or actual combat - this war was about ideology. And this was a foreign concept to most people at the time.

Enter UFOs. It's interesting that our society began to look for someone who was presumably better and smarter than us, who could hopefully come down and fix everything. To make everything okay again.  Effortlessly. Probably because of my interest in various religions of the world, it's curious to me why people looked to "aliens" as opposed to a particular god or gods.  Or, according to Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods?, perhaps people WERE looking to gods for assistance...

#133 March 2, 2011,  Pen
Sounds: Mark Bilyeu, First One Free