
The other day, Rob, Megan and I were in the car, on our way home beneath a vast blue Florida sky. So I asked one of those what if questions.
Me: “What if the sky suddenly filled with UFOs?”
Megan: “I’d lock myself in my room and seal up the house.”
Me: “But they might be friendly.”
Megan: “Yeah, they might be. But suppose they shot down beams of light and blew up the car in front of us?”
Me: “Then we’d race home. So does it come down to the ET scenario – benevolent aliens – or the V scenario – the bad aliens?”
Rob, who hadn’t said anything to this point, jumped in. “There are so many possibilities. They might be from another planet, they might be us from the future, or they could be inter-dimensional beings. Or something else altogether. Whatever they are, that kind of event would change everything. It would be a global paradigm shift.”
Megan and I agreed. Disclosure – by governments, by national security agencies, by whoever or whatever has maintained such a tight lid on the entire ET issue – would become irrelevant. If the leaders of countries announced that ETs were here, among us, the impact wouldn’t be as powerful as millions of people seeing a sky filled with UFOs. That would be something that even skeptics couldn’t dispute.
I’ve often thought that popular culture is the collective unconscious of any society. The fastest way that ideas are spread, that they reach a tipping point, is through visual and social mediums – movies, TV, books, Facebook, Twitter. Was the black president in 24 the voice of the collective saying we were ready for a black president? Or was it a shade of precognition? Or both?
Take a look at the TVs and movies coming up during the rest of 2011:
Falling Skies, a Stephen Spielberg alien invasion for TV
Super 8: a Spielberg/JJ Abrams (Lost) alien invasion for movies
Battle: Los Angeles -pro–U.S.military invasion alien invasion
I Am Number Four – from James Frey’s YA novel, alien invasion
Cowboys and Aliens – a period piece, old West alien invasion movie
Monsters – romance/alien invasion
Skyline -human-tornado alien invasion
Men in Black III – the 3rd in the franchise
The Thing -prequel alien invasion
Battleship – childhood-toy alien invasion
Iron Sky – Nazis alien invasion
Then there are the classics like The X-Files, 4400, V, Battlestar Galactica, all the Star Trek movies, Brother from Another Planet, Independence Day, Paul, K-Pax, and, of course, ET. And there are remakes of The Day the Earth Stood Still and War of the Worlds. I’ve probably left off a number of others.
The bottom line, though, is that in today’s world, the Internet provides us with more than just a cursory glimpse into Carl Jung’s collective unconscious. It IS the collective unconscious made conscious and visible. It’s as if TV, movies, books, and numerous websites are preparing us for something.
As we approached our neighborhood, Rob told Megan that when she was very small, she was afraid of aliens. Megan says she remembers coming into our room one night because she was scared about the aliens.
“Not your normal childhood fear,” I remarked.
“Uh, well, maybe that’s because you guys are weird. I mean, how many of my friends’ parents would be driving home and speculating about what we would do if the sky filled with UFOs?”
Properly humbled, Rob and I laughed and Megan leaped out of the car as though she couldn’t get away from us fast enough, but I could hear her chuckling.