2006-08-24 - 8:41 a.m.
A Vast Crop of Ideas, Some Good, Some Bad.
Crop circles. (See? I got around to it eventually.) I love them - not because I believe they're created by paranormal events or aliens (I don't), but because I see them as quite incredible manifestations of the human artistic drive. I was watching a program the other day (I love the nose-bleed channels; all kinds of weird programs come on during the afternoon) about crop circles that talked about the believers and the non-believers who admit to creating crop circles - the believer sees the circles as a ephemeral temple to the power of human energy, and prays to some deity or other (I'm not sure whom) as he creates them (and claims he sees balls of light energy often as he creates), and the non-believers who create them as an artistic endeavour and for money. The alien-believing crop circle people call the non-believers "Team Satan"; how can you not love that? I honestly don't believe in alien crop-circle makers; the odds of an alien race coming to Earth and being unable to communicate in any way other than mashing defenseless wheat to the ground seem pretty slim to me. Plus, as The Amazing Randi (debunker of all sorts of "paranormal" phenomena, and widely hated by the believers) says, show me a Christmas tree farm with crop circles; then I'll be impressed. There's ample evidence that people are at the heart of the crop circle phenomenon, and no evidence of anything alien or supernatural that can't be explained by much more prosaic means. In fact, I think that the "believers" cheapen the whole thing; these are truly great works of temporary art, installations that can only be done at certain times of the year, and need to be created in one short summer night if one is not to be seen doing it - anonymity is part of the canon of circle-making. Indeed, according to the program, it can be actively dangerous to make circles when people can see you - there have been documented incidents of circle-makers (working with permission and camera crews) who have been attacked by believers, escalating from shouted threats to thrown rocks and debris. Apparently, some people take their belief in the alien nature of crop circles terribly seriously. I'm not sure why they get so incensed at people making circles, though; surely, if the circles *are* a communication from an alien race, they'd be rather pleased to see us replying in kind. But logic is so... rational. It's that cold unromantic logic that points out all the flaws in any good conspiracy argument, like the fact that one person can create a medium-sized circle in less than five hours, or that circles only started appearing in the 1970s, and didn't start getting amazingly beautiful and complex until computer imaging gave us fractals to work from. What the believers miss is that it's just so *cool* to create these things (though less so for the farmer whose crop has been destroyed; I am torn between the beauty of the art and the desire *not* to destroy someone's livelihood, but such is the nature of appreciating guerilla art), and it's even cooler that it's people doing it. The artistic drive is one of the most magnificent, awe-inspiring, *amazing* things about the human animal, even if it sometimes manifests itself in Hummel figurines. One must take the bad with the good, and I, for one, am willing to put up with dreadful Franklin Mint lapses of taste if it means I also get Chartres Cathedral. The argument has been put forward that it *has* to be aliens creating the circles, because the true scope of the design can only be appreciated from the air. I would then bring up the Cerne Abbas Giant and the White Horse of Uffington. both predating aerial technology by quite a bit, but clearly created to be appreciated from above (above, in those cases, being the tops of neighbouring hills). Similarly, the Aztec mounds in South America were created by pre-flight civilizations, but appreciated all the same (yes, I know about the whole "alien landing strip" theories, and they're mind-bogglingly inane) by the people who made them and saw them (including, one presumes, the Gods for whom they were made). The drive to create, and create big, has been a part of the human psyche since prehistoric days, probably one of the very first acts that separated man from the beasts around him. (Well, that and the opposable thumbs. Some of us believe that the second act was to create nachos and queso dip, because without opposable thumbs, one cannot have dip and nachos, the eating of which has been a cornerstone of civilized interaction for, ooh, decades.) (I like nachos and dip, therefore I am a civilized human being.) (With a slight weight problem.) But back to the circles (and in the US, they are often created in corn fields, thereby neatly tying in the whole aside about nachos, for without corn one cannot have decent nachos), and the people who think they're alien and/or paranormal manifestations. Like alien abductions and ghosties that go crash in the night, I think the belief in the otherwordly nature of something that is most probably completely man-made is an attempt to make the world seem larger and more mysterious than it is. Sadly, it seems to compress their world rather than open it up, since all sorts of inconvenient facts must be denied or ignored to continue the belief. I find it terribly sad that some people cannot appreciate the circles for what they are, and the awesome creativity of the human mind that they represent, and instead try to create explanations that ultimately put us at the mercy of external forces. Perhaps it's an attempt to relinquish responsibility for an unsatisfying life; surely it is better to believe that aliens control us and make our lives dull and unsuccessful than to admit that we just haven't been terribly lucky in the whole lifestyle sweepstakes, eh? If you are the victim of aliens and paranormal forces, then all the weight of failure is on them, not you. That kind of abdication of responsibility has a powerful allure. To say that humans create these things is to acknowledge that some people are much, much better at visualizing and attaining success than you, and that's an uncomfortable notion. Personally, I relish the thought that we are capable as a people of creating amazing things - that way lies space travel, cathedrals, Enzo Angiolini shoes and the really cool retro toaster in my kitchen. The other way leads to anal probes, and I'd rather not suffer any more of those than the health of my colon demands. Aliens may seem romantic, but they're a creative dead-end. Put the power back in the hands of the artists and the scientists - there is greater romance in the truth. And if the truth eventually includes people from other planets? Well, we'll be more able to meet them as equals if we do not attribute unlikely powers to them, don't you think?
Dorsal - Ventral
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