Making Up Aliens Like Everyone Else

AT FIRST GLANCE, you wouldn't automatically assume that crop circles were made by extraterrestrial beings using extremely high tech. You would naturally assume that some human, or group of humans, did it. You would be impressed with the workmanship and detail, but you certainly wouldn't think it impossible for "mere humans' to design and create something so incredible. But, after hearing countless people inject alien beings into the crop circle story, you yourself perhaps now find it almost impossible not to do so. Chances are, when the first people, like those two English blokes, started mamking crop circles, they didn't expect anybody to suspect alien origins, and were quite surprised at the furor that was raised. but when all hell broke loose, with the media stories about aline beings and crop circles, the actual artists were doubtless inspired to ever greater works. When the two original blokes came forth and confessed, they wre largely ignored by the alien-crazed crop circle community. by then, the alien theory had become more than a theory; it had become established dogma among the believers. And herein lies a cautionary tale for homo sapiens sapiens. We tend to see whatever we want to see, whatever we imagine we see. Our explanations tend to be curiously anthropomorphic. I think vaguely we can all sense that there is something wrong, that all these crazy religious and superstitious beliefs we have accumulated, up to and including the aliens among us, might be rooted more in our minds than in external reality. But let's look at it this way. Whether or not anyone has ever been abducted by an alien, the mere fact that millions upon millions of people claim to've been constitutes an incredibly fascinating phenomena, worthy of close examination.