Posthuman Blues

More "cryptomania":

The Indigenous Hypothesis doesn't necessarily entail a global civilization of nonhumans. In fact, I find the possibility that the cryptoterrestrials have managed to remain socially intact throughout the millennia especially tenuous. Witness reports and common sense alike point toward a more likely scenario: that the CTs are wildly variant, at different levels of sophistication. While in possession of remarkable abilities -- not the least of which is the capacity for stealth -- some CT communities might even qualify as "primitive" in some respects.

[As of this writing, I'm looking into the possibility that "pygmies" reportedly captured by the Japanese during WWII were later used as fodder for medical research. That such an action might arouse the ire of the larger CT "community" practically goes without saying.]

Some CTs appear eminently comfortable among technologies that, historically, seem just beyond the human state-of-the-art. The pilots of the "mystery airships" of the 1890s, for example, seemed to have anticipated our own dominion of the air at least as capably as Jules Verne. Betty Hill's eerily accurate description of amniocentesis has been cited as another case of "alien" technology seen in action shortly before its implementation in the human realm. Again, this isn't what we would expect of an arbitrarily capable extraterrestrial civilization. Rather, it suggests a technology surprisingly like our own, another indication that the beings' casual allusions to outer space should be taken with a dose of healthy skepticism.

(Although we shouldn't presume that some CTs haven't succeeded in gaining a foothold in space, making them a novel kind of ET. Maybe the term "post-terrestrial" best describes this offshoot, to which I'll return in a later chapter.)

Unfortunately, reports of technologically savvy entities have all-but eclipsed equally credible reports of less sophisticated beings. After all, advanced beings promise a welcoming future, if only indirectly. If we should detect a genuine extraterrestrial civilization, whether through an instrumented search like SETI or via direct visitation, hopes for our own continued existence stand to reap enormous rewards. Consequently, we yearn for "others" who are both wiser and more capable.

The attractive human-like "aliens" who contacted the likes of George Adamski and Howard Menger were hailed as veritable messiahs, their disdain for reckless atomic experimentation reiterated in the fiction of the day. To a somewhat lesser extent, today's Grays -- though harsher and more pragmatic than their glamorous predecessors -- convey the same message, exposing their subjects to scenes that appear to predict impending apocalypse.

In a world suffering from pronounced greenhouse effects and record-breaking extinctions, these images couldn't come at a more opportune time. Either the CTs are studiously exploiting our deepest fears as part of some far-ranging psychological experiment or their concerns are quite real. But is it our world they care about or their own?

The existence of "primitive" CT communities leaves us no choice but to willfully deflate our confidence in the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis -- especially when the gross resemblances to alleged ETs are so pronounced.

For example, I have a reliable first-hand report of "little people" at large in the American Northwest. My source encountered a small congregation of these beings in a wooded area. Human-like in all essential respects, the beings were nevertheless small, like normal people in miniature. Although the encounter was brief, my source was able to glean some important information. The "little people" claimed to predate known North American cultures and possessed their own language. As in so many other accounts of meetings with ufonauts or "paranormal" entities, they appeared Asian (again inviting speculation that they originate from a "lost" community that has opted for a peripheral role, effectively hidden from the mainstream).

According to the beings' spokesman, they remain hidden largely by virtue of our narrow perceptual focus, even able to pass among us disguised as children. (I'm reminded immediately of Bruce Lee's bookstore encounter with apparent Grays wrapped in scarves.) Supposedly they lead an almost hobo-like existence, without recourse to the sort of technology associated with UFOs.

While this all sounds innocuous enough, my source qualified his story by stating that he felt that his meeting had been arranged not so much for his benefit as for theirs -- an unsettling idea that brings to mind a surveillance program of potentially epic scope. Abductees sometimes report visits by curious human-seeming interlopers, or even symptoms consistent with electronic eavesdropping (up to and including so-called "implants," but just as often strange hissing on the telephone or the sudden onset of "electrosensitivity," rendering witnesses unable to operate delicate electronics). One abductee I know is plagued by seemingly sourceless beeping -- a phenomenon encountered as early as the famous Hill abduction.

If I'm correct and "down to Earth" cryptoterrestrials and "ETs" are aspects of the same phenomenon, we should expect certain parallels. Moreover, we should never believe what the others tell us without taking into account their obvious need for secrecy. One may argue that the mere fact that they initiate open contact with humans at all reeks of misdirection, and perhaps that's the point. But they could just as easily genuinely need a network of human contacts, a foothold in our world to fall back on in times of crisis.

If nomadic CTs are forced to adopt a marginal role in our world, it's unlikely they have easy access to the communications infrastructure we take for granted; maybe it's no coincidence that my source is a computer programmer. Or the truth could be markedly less conspiratorial. Maybe they simply crave a sympathetic ear. If they can successfully masquerade as children and homeless people, why exclude the occasional "pop-in" visit?