Exploring the Social Imagination

Monday, April 20, 2015

Alien Beings in the Social Imagination


Isn't it interesting the discussion about alien beings. Where does this idea as in imagination come from?
Just about everyone has seen a science fiction film about aliens invading earth or TV shows where humans and aliens are working together. Did you know that we have telescopes looking for them? Where does this social imagination come from?

Speaking as a sociologist, I can tell you that it likely comes from an innate desire to know the source of social imagination. We have a natural tendency to look to the cosmos for an answer because it appears to be bigger than we are, bigger than our social imagination. In that contemplation, we have a keen desire to be reunited with what is larger than life... our life. 

What I find interesting is that whenever humans and aliens are combined to form some kind of alliance or 'greater' community, aliens are given top positions in the 'social' hierarchy. Why? It is because of our innate desire and even knowing that there is something greater that is the creator. Humans thus tend to imagine that aliens are either the creator or somehow closer to it as they imagine aliens having greater machines, intellect, and transportation to come and go throughout the cosmos 'being' God as we think that they are doing and desire to be doing.

I have yet to hear anyone imagining that humans are the greatest creations and that we would be the guardians of the cosmos and that everything else would fall under our domain.

I have yet to hear a lot about the idea that aliens might be supernatural beings from a higher dimension and that they are part of the same God created cosmos as humans only they corrupted it against the Creator's will.

Aliens, if there were any real aliens in fact, would be unrecognizable to us; thus, we cannot imagine 'real' aliens as if they are outside of us, outside of our experience. We can only imagine what we have already experienced as in something which we have already imagined, known, and or can put together using things that we know. That is why any imagination of aliens tend to be a blend of things we know.

Does that sound as though we have poor imaginations? It only means we have limited imagination. Is that good or bad? One could suppose it is both. One could suppose that when we need more imagination we will either access it or be bestowed with it which does not mean that by suddenly having more information aliens will appear to us and we will see them as they really and truly are. If anything, we will be imagining them only slightly different than any other imagination we have yet imagined; but even then, what does that mean?  It can mean that as long as we have only a certain amount of information to use in our social imaginations, we will only be able to imagine something using what we have to work with; as in using the information we have  at hand in different combinations.

The greater question is - Who provides this information? Aliens? As stated above, we cannot know aliens so we would not recognize 'their' information. We recognize the information that the Creator of Heaven and Earth provides, acknowledging that there is a creator as all programs have creators and that we imagine Him as He imagined us. Hence, we recognize that we are humans because we were created that way. There is nothing that the Creator 'God' did not imagine, that we could not imagine. We exist in His imagination and thus His imagination is not alien to us. We have yet to embrace that fully.  So, again... to ask why are we imagining Aliens ??? If anything they are results of our failure to embrace the Creator's imagination.

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