Are you unsure?

I am sure that he is going to miss the deadline and make me do all the work! I am sure we are going to win this deal! I am sure he is lying! I am sure he will not make it! (Endless….)

People are pretty much sure about everything in life except one. Themselves!

I guess that is the root cause of all the trouble. If one can claim with confidence, that, they are sure about themselves, then the rest is just about execution. However, it turns out that most of the time and effort is spent on building self-confidence and very little on execution.

It’s just about time people put the surety in the right place and got into execution mode.

Aliens and “Astronaut” helmets!

I have been watching a lot of TV here in the States! Recently there was a program about ancient cultures and aliens. The Mayans, Egyptians, Persians, Chinese and Indians took their usual high pedestals, interspersed with the mention of Stonehenge and ancient Europe. It was quite an interesting couple of hours.

The idea of the program was to pitch 2 sets of people against each other, those, who believed that ancient civilizations were made up of a mix of aliens and humans and those, who believed that ancient civilizations were just simply intelligent.

What amazed me in this section was, both the sides were represented by Americans and Americans only, whose knowledge of world cultures, archeology and other eastern histories is inversely proportional to their modern scientific knowledge! The moment I observed this key anomaly, I realized that I am in for a fantasy ride!

The participants in the program simply dismissed the idea that humans, from outside the U.S, thousands of years ago, could have been far superior in intellectual capacity. To drive the last nail into the coffin, they concluded the program with a skeptic remark that rest of the world, got their scientific or architectural advancements probably by a “divine” intervention of the aliens. Also, as if to rub salt into the wounds, they put the onus on the world, to prove them wrong instead!!

This is not just a rambling of a guy from east or the orient! Look at some of the statements / scenarios which were used to speculate that aliens were involved in building the giant structures or advancement of sciences like astronomy etc.,

1. They showed some of the ancient cave paintings by humans which depicted some figures with large heads and eyes (typically like your ET creature) and remarked “Look at these paintings, can’t you see that the figures are wearing helmets and their eyes are big and look like aliens??” [I will come back to this point later in this essay…]
2. “These Pyramids are just so huge that we humans could never have built it! They never had cranes or other equipment to climb so high!”
3. Looking at some pictures from Indian mythology they remarked – “Look at these guys, they are flying around in saucers, this definitely means they are aliens”
4. Marveling at the Mayan temples, “Look at these huge, heavy stones! Who could possibly have carried it all the way up, we humans don’t have the strength to do such things and also look at the symmetry, we never had aircraft or something like that to get a birds eye view and help position these building symmetrically”

Well, what can I say?

People from different corners of the world, during a comparable time period have made use of tools and technology in vastly different ways to achieve the same goal.

Have you seen a Soviet radio and a US radio? Well, if not let me explain how it looked. The Soviet radios were bulky and made of tubes; however, the US radios were made of the latest transistor technology and were sleek! I am talking about comparable technology from a comparable time period. They were immensely different but both the radios did the same function, which was to receive the signals that were broadcast.

Let me share another extreme example from my own country, India! Unfortunately I do not have material evidence to prove what I am about to claim. But if you believe that some one in an old cave painting, wearing a head gear or a helmet is an alien, then you might as well listen to the following!

In Indian mythology, we have two great epics. Ramayana & Mahabharatha – The epic Mahabharatha provides hundreds of intriguing stories which if we correlate with modern science would baffle us. Let me quote just three of them

1. Gandhari – the mother of the antagonist Kaurava camp gave birth to 100 children from a single mass of tissue which was implanted in her… thus goes the story. Now, correlate it to tissue culture, cloning or test tube babies, quite possible isn’t it?
2. There was a charioteer in the Kaurava camp who could see what was happening on the battle field (probably hundreds of miles away) and relay it to the king in the palace sitting beside him – Does it sound like telepathy, television? In fact telepathy is a well documented phenomenon!
3. A deadly weapon called Brahma-astra – which literally translates to “Atom weapon” was known to the warriors in the field and there are numerous stories of negotiations of non-usage of such a weapon in the war. Finally the epic claims, that this deadly weapon, capable of destroying the entire planet was never used by anybody and that the world was saved. Does this mean, ancient Indians were aware of the concept that if you can destroy an atom you could destroy the planet because the atom is a microcosm of the universal energy?

Yes, it sounds eerie! But hey, I did not just conjure it up. The epics were written thousands of years ago…

Imagine a thousand years from now. What if, someone digs up New York, London, Shanghai, Bombay, and wonders, if, we humans in 2010 were really capable of building such huge structures like the Empire State building? What if they say that New York was built by aliens?

My case in point is… why is it difficult for this handful of people in the U.S to believe that the world was at a much advanced stage thousands of years ago and that some one from outside of U.S could build such structures? Why should one attempt to try and speculate about something?

I think I found the answer! I have observed that U.S has every single thing which makes it a super power, but, amongst a few powerful people, there is a feeling that they lack something! They feel that they lack history which dates back to about thousands of years and a few structures like Stonehenge or Pyramids... There are some people who are absolutely not happy about this fact and hence, they want to put down other country’s history or fantasize an alien story and add a new dimension.

A bunch of people out here in the U.S believe that History is not made and that it is written or worst, that, it is produced in Hollywood! Yes, I just said it - Hollywood. Well, then how do you explain the comments regarding “aliens have helmets???!!!” Dudes, aliens need not have helmets just because we guys from earth wear a helmet when we go to outer space. Look at animals; they do not wear mittens, coats, gloves, sweaters and shoes while they are out in cold. They have their own mechanism to handle it! Where could this concept of helmets stem from other than Hollywood movies, where, aliens are depicted with big heads, spooky eyes and a big helmet with antennas??? By the way, if it helps! I still believe Neil Amstrong went to Universal studios and not to Moon!

I could not help but just feel bad for these guys!

By the way, let me make one thing pretty clear. This is not an essay aimed at berating the American people or this great country. This article is just fixated at a handful of people, who believe that they can carve out or create a translated history. When I say a handful – YES, I mean it.

Do you remember World War – II, when things got out of hands because people’s fantasies turned into beliefs and values?

It took just 3 people to cause the death of 50 million people during the World War II… No, I am not referring to Hitler, Mussolini and Emperor Hirohito! I am talking about, Blavatsky with her “Secret Doctrine”, Dietrich Eckart and his occult practices and Lanz von Liebenfels an Austrian monk who created a perfect villain in Jews and dark skinned people of this planet! These three people manually wrote up a fictitious history about Aryans, Jews, Anti-Christ etc., (the Superman and Superwoman, Superior race, Atlantis stories) which inspired these puppets and the consequence almost wiped out the very existence of human race. Thankfully we stopped short of it!

So guys, relax! There is no URGENCY to create or conjure up a history from your figment of imagination. Please learn to travel a lot and learn other cultures, religions and histories. When I said travel, I strictly meant it! Plain, simple travel and not like your recent “travels” to Vietnam or Iraq! Spend more time in understanding the mega structures or cultures instead of wasting time on fantasizing a story to degrade the ethos of others.

When I came to US, I was flabbergasted at the man made marvels of the 20^th century, the natural splendor of Grand Canyon (I typed “grand canyon” and it suggested that I change it to Grand Canyon, well, OK– I will!) and other museums which are home to some pieces of this planet’s history which is not safe in its homeland (read Iraq)… It is much appreciated that the U.S has preserved some of the world’s treasures…

I sincerely wish that this handful of people will realize and wake up to the fact that greatness comes from tolerance to queerness and not from appreciation of similarities. That - history is made and not written or produced in Hollywood….and that their continued good will and benevolent nature, will endure the test of time. Probably, a hundred or thousand years hence, people will talk about this great nation (U.S) as one which helped mankind preserve the human race for centuries to come and hence carve out a place in history for itself!

Ciao