Dear Aliens:
I will start with an apology right away, because I don’t know your cultures, so I’ll probably commit a typical Earthling faux pas without being aware of it.
If you have been on our planet only a short while, you might think all we care about is the coronavirus: Yes, there are daily updates on numbers of people infected (and dead) in the United States and the world, discussions on the science of contagion, details about what governments are doing to “slow the spread” or “flatten the curve,” tales of children who are stuck at home, accounts of lonely people desperate for a hug, special coronavirus sections on major websites (even one on the Google Maps app), a tragicomic headline about someone crashing a car due to hypoxia while wearing a mask, and a news item about a physician who committed suicide, etc.
But, please believe me: It is a story about the surface of things. It is much easier to talk about fighting a virus than to look at more thorny problems. You may have also noticed, for example, that here in the United States, 45% of citizens are obese. So many people still smoke, even knowing the health risks. Lots of people have heart trouble. Stress is high. There are tons of lonely people, and opioid addiction is everywhere.
I know our earth websites and newspapers are comparatively silent about these things that can’t be fought as invaders, and officials are not issuing any sweeping edicts regarding them. From your perspective it probably looks like earthlings prefer to avoid looking deeper into the causes of their unhappiness. And no, it doesn’t make any sense that our nation’s strategy of isolating everyone is probably actually increasing addiction, abuse, and deep loneliness. It also probably looks like we are basically a species given to panicking and overreacting. Luckily, not all of us are that way. One woman wrote:
I don’t think any amount of fear is healthy. Unless you’re talking about the fact that if you have fear about a street, you’ll look up and down before crossing the street. . . . But I don’t think that’s fear. That’s just being sensible. (Peace Pilgrim, Her Life and Work in Her Own Words, page 68)
I hope you’ve been on Earth long enough to know what a street is. It is a dangerous place where we drive terrestrially based vehicles that often kill some of us. Also, regarding some things above, smoking is taking the products of combustion into the lungs which increases the chance of cancer. Cancer is a nasty and painful disease. Obesity is caused by eating way more than one needs, and suicide is taking one’s own life. You might need a dictionary for a lot of what I’m writing about. But then again, you have apparently solved the issue of traveling faster than the speed of light, so I’m sure you can figure it out. Although I bet the smoking, obesity, and suicide are still puzzling.
Anyway, to follow that Peace Pilgrim quote: To slow down coronavirus spread and possibly save some of our at risk people, we have enacted some precautions that could be construed as sensible, such as wearing masks to prevent exhaling, coughing, or sneezing the virus into widely shared indoor spaces. Others, such as closing parks and wearing masks outside, where people are not coughing or sneezing on each other, well, okay, they don’t make much sense. Overall, I’m sure you’ve noticed that because of fear, one now has to prove that an activity will not lead to infection instead of having to prove that something does lead to infection. You might wonder if we are on our way to ever increasing and time-consuming measures. We might be.
This leads to my big question of you, my dear aliens: Could you please help us out here? Because we are a species that only sometimes seems able to take care of ourselves. We don’t solve big problems like widespread starvation. And if there is a virus, we focus all our attention on it.
I understand that maybe Earthlings are a bit scary to you the way we are always talking about waging a war against genetic invaders. After all, you yourselves are invaders with different genetics, I assume. So I wouldn’t go showing yourselves openly. That would be a bad idea, given our history of burning witches and the Spanish Inquisition and things like that.
I know it may not seem sometimes like we are worth helping, especially if you think about the witches, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and people who deny the Holocaust ever happened. But again, I think we are worth saving; there have been some people who were cool. Such as, again, Peace Pilgrim, who also wrote this:
Your mind, also your body and your emotions, can only be adequately controlled by the divine nature, not the self-centered nature. If you really love people, you do not fear them. If you live in harmony with divine will, fear is gone. If you identify with that within you which is immortal, you do not fear death. If you fear, it is because your life is still governed by the self-centered nature. (Id., page 161)
You know what, come to think of it, maybe she was an alien. Maybe you’ve been sending aliens all along trying to help us out here. In that case, thank you. And also, if it’s totally going to shit down here, please take all people away on your ships and let the Earth go on without us. Maybe you have special classes somewhere on how not to suck as a species.
Finally, as one of our great wise men, Dieter, who I now realize was probably also an alien, said, “This story has become tiresome. Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance.” Please give me some alien dance lessons, too. That would be cool.
Hopefully,
Another Frigging Earthling
Acknowledgments: Thank you to Charles Eisenstein and Jeff Foster for inspiration. And Shawn G. for introducing me to their work.
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