There are some vital implications of the UFO/UAP incidents, and also of the ongoing scientific Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), that already affect our lives.  Many consider these to be frivolous matters, of no importance to our everyday existence, but there is an understated possibility.  The outcome of researching these matters can lead to a radical reordering of our social, economic, and even religious lives.  

Sudden advances in technology have usually caused economic dislocations.  For example, livery stables gave way to automobile repair shops, to the chagrin of many a blacksmith.  Abrupt changes in economic conditions often have dramatic political consequences and may even lead to war.  Darwin's book on evolution led to a rift between science and religion.  

Imagine, then, an unprecedented leap forward in technology that leaves most of our present-day gadgetry in the dust.  Imagine that, overnight, our computers have become as primitive as the abacus, our telephones as smoke signals, and our medical science comparable to bloodletting.  Could this happen?  

It could.  It need not require that creatures arrive from an advanced civilization, bringing the products of their own industry: computers, communication devices, and biomedical knowledge.  Less dramatically than that, artifacts discovered on Mars, the moon, or even here on Earth could yield knowledge of materials that we have never known how to produce.   

Not knowing how to produce them would not be a dead end.  Simply knowing that they exist would give scientists and technologists an increased incentive to try, with confidence in the prospect of success.  As we all know, even when a scientific project is deemed a failure, there are ancillary benefits that might never have been made available without that failed project.  Penicillin was an accidental discovery.  

Society is now sufficiently complex that it is all but impossible to isolate one part of it from the others.  Everything has a ripple effect.  An induced genetic mutation in agriculture can multiply the world's food output by many times, but also, induced mutations in a virus can kill millions.  

Even without hard evidence, the probabilities alone make life on other planets a reasonable assumption, even by hard-faced scientists who scoff at speculation.  Now there is a growing body of evidence that there may be alien spacecraft in our skies.  So far as we know, the evidence is not conclusive, at least not yet — but the need to gather more data has finally affected our national budget.  We actually have at least one government agency officially looking into it, spending tax money.  There are calls for expanding it and making it transparent to the public — no more hiding behind excuses masquerading as national security concerns.

While there is no public proof of alien artifacts, the mere observation of UAPs is strong evidence that unknown means of controlled flight and propulsion do in fact exist.  Whereas in times past, the inquiry into possible anti-gravity devices, for example, was summarily dismissed, there is now at least an open-door attitude for such things.  Theoretical physicists who suggest such possibilities must now at least be given a fair chance to make their case.  Obstructionist gatekeepers must, however grudgingly, give way to them.  

Also, there is now a conscious awareness that imminently, a breakthrough discovery could be made — one that would radically alter our perceptions of what is possible.  We may begin to view ourselves as indigenous savages, looking out across the expanse of ocean and seeing, for the first time, the tips of distant sails.  

Image via Pixabay.

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