A Momentary Blip - Sept 10 2025

 

A Momentary Blip

Sept 10 2025

It's settled, then. 

There are no aliens.

No one’s watching over us,

the so-called UFOs

were swamp gas, planets

satellites,

and the pyramids

were built by slaves

not extraterrestrials.

So we’re on our own.

The only intelligent life.

All alone

in the universe. 

No one to defend against

except ourselves,

or welcome with open arms

except our fellow man.

So why do we invent these little green men?

I suppose the same reason

we invent angels and gods,

genies

seraphim

and fairy godmothers.

Our need for company. 

For an organizing principle

to make sense of things.

And for a saviour;

a granter of wishes and object of prayer,

because we so often 

fail ourselves.

Although I suppose this comes naturally;

if we can so automatically project life

into a plush toy with plastic eyes,

then why not a speck of light

in a sky we rarely look up at

moving too fast for a star?

But even better to ask

about our own earthly presence.

Accidental

or inevitable?

In a vast universe 

of inert matter and immense energy

do the constraints of chemistry

mean that life will happen, no matter what,

and that given time

the end result

will always be intelligence?

Or did it happen only once? 

Does intelligence arise 

here and there

again and again,

or are we a momentary blip

a singular event?

And even more outlandishly, one might ask

does the universe have a purpose

and could it be us?

Is the universe evolving, like any life form

from rudimentary 

to self-aware?

And are we, if not its cortex

at least its homunculus?

But back to the blip.

The exquisite unlikelihood

of this living planet,

and of us, this incidental sentience

here not only to witness

but to experience awe.

As well as clever enough

to have acquired the godlike power

to defile and befoul

our only home.

No deus ex machina

with advanced technology 

to descend from the heavens and rescue us.

No little green men

with big heads and probing eyes

who made it through the bottleneck

of their own destructive power 

to spend light years crossing space 

in a cramped titanium saucer

out of mere curiosity.

And no aliens far from home

who ventured out to a minor arm

of a small spiral galaxy,

eager to share with us the secret

of not outsmarting ourselves.

A self-aware universe is a lot too science fiction for me. But the idea is out there, and I thought a reader who is new to it might find this a bracing jolt to their settled worldview. But really, I’m  far too grounded for such speculative thought. The more prudent thing would be for me to leave the mysticism to the mystics and the science fiction to the novelists!

Perhaps I should have dwelled even more on  the absurd hubris of imagining that any extra-terrestrials out there would even notice us, let alone bother to visit — that is, in the stupendously unlikely event there even was advanced intelligent life close enough in space and coincident in time that they could! 

And perhaps also explored further how we automatically project onto these hypothetical visitors our own flawed nature, imagining them coming not in brotherly love, but as colonizers, exterminators, or slave masters: after all, isn’t it more often “war of the worlds” than emissaries of peaceful coexistence? Our depictions say more about us than anything. 

I apologize for once again writing an environmental diatribe disguised as a poem. (Too strong a word? OK then, make it screed, rant, plea.) I fear it must get tiresome, come off as preachy and self-righteous. In my defence, I didn’t start out with that in mind.  Rarely do. Just riffing on UFOs and whether or not we’re alone in the universe  …and then the thing took the usual (but still unexpected!) turn.

Although maybe it took that turn because I was wondering why we seem so eager for alien visitors. Are we seeing what we want to see? Just as our ancestors invented supernatural beings to explain, give order, and answer our pleas, do we invent little green men?  To prove we’re not alone. To give hope our species can survive these trying times. And perhaps even to rescue us from our collective folly of war, cruelty, and environmental degradation.