Over the past years, there has been a huge rise in movies and shows about an apocalypse happening on Earth, and a small group of humans having to survive in a scorched-Earth scenario. Movies have been showing us bombs raining down on the planet, while whole cities are being wiped off the map.
Similarly, over the past decade we seem collectively fascinated by aliens, yet they are rarely portrayed as wise, compassionate beings. In most media, non-terrestrial intelligent species are shown as violent and manipulative, here to use Earth and its resources for their own gain or to enslave and exploit humanity.
These themes are popular not because they reflect rational fears about the future, but because they touch something much deeper.
While about 50% of the people today believe that intelligent life must exist somewhere in the universe, these same people will often get angry and ridicule anyone who suggests that there may have been contact between such extra-terrestrial intelligence and humanity. It has not been that long ago, around the 1950s, when you could be fired from your job and be sure you’d never work again, for saying you had seen a UFO. You would have been branded a heretic and throw out of society. Still today there are many people who respond with strong negative emotion to the idea that extra-terrestrial lifeforms are in contact with humans, or have been so in the past.
There is very little rationale or scientific thinking behind this kind of response. Most of the time, you will be met with intense emotion and a religious insistence that you’re crazy for suggesting the existence of “aliens” in our present day world, or in the past. When you try to point to sources, you’ll more often than not hear things like “That’s all conspiracy bullshit” or “Nobody in their right mind believes that” or “I thought you were a rational person!” A few hundred years ago, you would have met the same response for suggesting the world is round, or that little creatures in your bloodstream – rather than God – make you ill.
Our society, led by our scientists, has a religious devotion to the idea that the Earth has never been touched before by any extra-terrestrial species, and has tried to repress any ideas of an alternative paradigm. The only thing that stops humanity from recovering the buried memories of the past at this point is the sort of socio-religious indoctrination, this core mindset that causes you to say, "You believe in aliens, you're crazy."
Yet at the same time, people are concerned that aliens are going to come and invade us and make everyone slaves if we don't have big enough guns. Over the past decade, there has been a huge rise in movies, tv-show, books and games about alien invasions. In such shows, the aliens are always the bad guys. They are usually not particularly smarter than humans, and no more advanced in anything but technology. More often than not, they are savage creatures only here to manipulate, plunder and destroy, leaving the Earth in a post-apocalyptic world. Even in the New-Age religions, where channelling aliens, abduction stories and extra-terrestrial contact are commonplace, there is a strong fear of especially reptilian aliens. There are many websites describing how an extra-terrestrial cabal is secretly ruling our planet and has enslaved humanity without us even realising it. Some of the things coming out are true and feel like they have a lot of substance to them, others are nonsense. The difficulty is telling which is which, because they are all mixed together.
A common theme is that there are resources on Earth that this extra-terrestrial race needs, and they are willing to come and take it with no regard for human life or Earth’s sovereignty. We recount over and over, in many different ways, how a catastrophe has destroyed our way of living, killed countless of people, and left the survivors to rebuild in a desolate world.
Stories only become popular when they touch something deep in our subconscious. Consider, at least for the purpose of our story, that these fears about aliens and the many movies we watch about a catastrophe wiping out most of the population, may not be fears we have for the future. Consider, even if just for a moment, that we may be collectively remembering a past where aliens came and humans didn’t have big enough guns and the aliens made slaves out of people and destroyed much of our civilisation.
The only thing that stops humanity from recovering the buried memories of the past at this point is the sort of socio-religious indoctrination, this core mindset that causes you to say, "You believe in aliens, you're crazy."