The dumbest ideas about extraterrestrials are so massively stupid, they generally pass by without notice. Press and television reports always miss them, but as you’ll see, they’re really obvious.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

By David Stone

Assorted Ideas Large & Small

Dumbest Ideas About Extraterrestrials and UFOs: Item #1

Here’s what got me started.

A snarky columnist in the New York Times, tossing cold water on UFO claims after the recent release of a Pentagon report, said something sounding sensible but really stupid.

“If we are being frequently visited by aliens, why don’t they just land on the White House lawn and announce themselves?” he wondered, almost as if it was a sensible idea.

You know, like, why are those aliens so sneaky?

Really?

But the answer is mind-bogglingly simple?

As Jared Diamond explained in his book, Collapse, a little research answers the question. Homo sapiens, that is, you and me, one damn frightening record when it comes to meeting other cultures or species.

Very often, we kill them.

That was true all over the developing world in all of recorded history, and the chronicles are unambiguous. Whether Roman Legions, Catholic Crusaders or Nazi eugenicists, we killed a lot people challenging our beliefs or power. There are volumes of other examples, and its not confined to our own species.

And just making it clear, women, children, the sick, elderly and lame are not spared. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, anyone?

Neither are animals. You’ve heard of woolly mammoths, giant anteaters and sabretooth tigers, haven’t you? What do you think happened to them? They didn’t starve in an ice age nor were they wiped out by meteors.

People killed them, and then, they ate them. Until there weren’t any more.

If you were Captain Kirk from some other galaxy, brother, you’d think twice about landing here. And then, you wouldn’t.

The headquarters of the most militaristic nation on earth is unsafe. Things are better now, but Trump hated a large number of human categories.

How might he have dealt with visitors from another world who thought conspiracy theories were a sign of collective mental illness… as any advanced civilization would?

Which takes us to Item #2…

Maybe the most overlooked as well as one of dumbest ideas about extraterrestials and UFOs is this: everyone one just takes it for granted that they’re coming to study humans.

What the heck’s so special about us among the myriad species on our little home planet?

Talk about hubris.

With magnificent giants roaming our oceans and fascinating fungi vitally engaged with virtually every plant, why learn about the most destructive of all species? Yes, explorers may want to consider the psychology of an animal that knowingly does so much harm that the entire planet is threatened.

But more likely, they’re looking at how to save the fabric of life woven into all things by less sluggish or sullen species.

Bacteria, viruses, fungi, alga, etc… Fascinating, diverse, flexible, and all thriving in greater numbers than homo sapiens.

And yet, everyone immediately assumes, like a pampered teen queen, that it’s all about us.