What’s Out There: Random Speculations

Hi everyone and welcome back! Today I’m going to write about a conversation I had with my mother one day. We were both just going back and forth, building off of what each of us said. Now, I want to say I’m agnostic, but really, I’m a true aethiest at heart and do not believe in creationism, or God or the afterlife, however much I want to. One side of my family is very much religious but I was allowed to discover religion on my own. I like to learn about what others believe, but I don’t feel like it should be pushed on people. I know our history is full of religious wars, and I kind of consider it all pretty silly; let people believe in what they want to believe and mind your own business. (As an aside, I'm on the last season of Vikings and basically, the whole entire plot is cycled around wars between Paganism and Christianity. A whole lot of people die, and the whole show seems pretty pointless).

To that end, the conversation my mother and I were having brings me to one that my Dad and I had a long time ago, before he passed away. I think I was only ten or eleven at the time, but what he said stuck with me to this day. (My Dad was older, born in 1935, and I regret not knowing him as well as I liked. I have two kids of my own now and find myself wanting to ask him questions about his life). I don’t know if my Dad truly believed this, or if he was throwing ideas around like me and my mom. However, he told me that we, as Humans only use about 10% of our brain power. What would happen, he said, if we could use all 100% of it? Does this remind you of that movie, Lucy? It’s not quite the same, because I believe she was given a drug. However, as my Dad was explaining, he thought the overall effect would be similar. Obviously, this conversation took place long before the movie ever came out.

We could potentially have telepathic powers, be able to move things with our minds, and who knows what else. He went on to talk about aliens. You heard me - ALIENS. He fully believed that aliens existed, and even had some events throughout his life which made him wonder. So, he postulated what if these “aliens” were actually humans who could use 100% of their brainpower?

At the time, I couldn’t really question him or debate it because I was a kid of ten and didn't have much information about it. Now however, after having received two degrees from the University of Alberta, I follow his thinking. I do believe in evolution, after having studied the evidence for such a long time. I went to school for over 9 years, and both my degrees are in science. So my question to my Dad would be this: if we as the current humans on Earth have only been around for such a short time, in comparison to the age of the Earth, when did these other humans have time to evolve and how did we not notice them leaving the planet? I mean, there are all sorts of questions and hypotheses and judgements you could make about it. But a lot of things are possible that we didn’t believe could be done in the past, so why not?

My thoughts on religion are this: dying is scary so we want to believe that we don’t really die, we just move on to an afterlife, or are reborn. I think that we are just no longer - we are simply gone. It’s scary, and even at 39 years old, thoughts about dying keep my insomnia alive. It petrifies me to the point of anxiety attacks. However, it doesn’t prevent me from enjoying my life and giving my kids all my knowledge to prepare them for their lives. I will live on through them.

The conversation between my Mom and I started with an article on an UFO (unidentified flying object) which was flying above a plane. The pilot called it in as a long cylindrical object, most likely a missile. The pilot was flying in an area where this commonly takes place, but the government denied any goings on during this particular time. Honestly, I kind of think the government only tells us stuff that they want us to know. They are not going to divulge any top secret projects or missions, etc. The general public is on a “need to know basis” only and that is kind of scary.

So we were discussing this missile, and we started talking about aliens and actual UFO’s. I have never seen anything myself, and I don’t believe my mother has either, but I did tell her my Dad’s theory. She started to expand on it by saying that scientists tell us that our universe is limitless, as time is limitless. We usually refer to this as infinite. As well, our universe is constantly expanding. First of all, it is challenging for the average person to wrap their head around that. How can something go on forever? The thing is, time is a human construct. We started marking time in the Roman days with events and with the rising and setting of the sun. Time as we know it today was actually invented by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus; the birth of Christ marked Year One. Basically, one could say that everything we know is a human construct, with the exception of the Earth. (Or is it? We’ll touch on this in just a moment).

So, as we were saying, the universe is constantly expanding which makes it infinite. We have no idea what is out there, or who for that matter. We always refer to everything outside our perception as “alien” , but really, our perception in the grand scheme of things is actually very small. You could liken our world to a snow globe or a fish bowl as it were. We find it hard to grasp infinite, and also things that we can’t explain within our human constructs. Then it either must be magic, religion or science. Or maybe a little of all three…

Now, I want to talk a bit about an author I started reading in Grade 4. I came across these books quite randomly. I liked the first one I read, so I continued until I read every single one. The author in question is Piers Anthony. Have you heard of him? Crazy enough, he was born in 1934 and lives in the United Kingdom. That makes him 86 years old. I started reading his Xanth series. Xanth is based off of the geological similarities of Florida, but it is a magic world with magicians, demons, centaurs and any other number of magical creatures you can imagine. Piers Anthony is known for his puns in his novels, making them fun reading. In Xanth, Demons are the rulers. Demon Xanth is of course the leader of Xanth, Demon Earth is of course the leader of Earth, etc…

During this random conversation with my Mom, I found similarities between the topic of debate and Xanth’s Demons. What if, these higher human beings evolved, took off to other planets and we are their “experiments”. That sounds a little abnormal and grotesque, but by that, I don’t mean that they do experiments on us. Rather, I mean what if they placed the world here, started us out as amoebas and monkeys and watched us evolve and placed bets on us as the Demon’s in Piers Anthony’s novels do? What if we are just a past time for some other evolved higher beings? They can see us, and observe us, but we are absolutely clueless because of our limited perceptions and closed way of thinking. The events and hardships in our lives are these “people” placing obstacles in front of us and watching what we do - whether we survive, die, evolve, everything. This could be grand scheme, like the wars that have happened or personal events like meeting that perfect someone. Is fate really fate, or is it someone playing with our realities? Is this why people believe in a Higher Power because there have been instances that cannot be explained, or is it just blind faith? Or is it because we, as a human society fear death?

Again, it’s difficult to explain what is in the books I’m referring to if you have never read Piers Anthony’s work before. Like I said, I have been reading them (and still do) since Grade 4, and always just took fiction writing with a grain of salt. I enjoy fiction writing most of all, because it lets me escape from the drudgeries and realities of real life. But since thinking of these “apparent” random conversations I’ve had in my life, it got me to wondering. Again, this is not really what I believe, but I like wondering, “What if?” It would explain a lot. Thanks to my random speculations, I’ll now have one more thing to keep me up at night!

xoxo SAN