Essay on Government Secrecy

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” This quote said by Oliver Wendell Holmes perfectly reflects how I felt when NASA confirmed the existence of aliens. This idea has stretched my mind and I will never be the person I was before. 

On April 27, 2020 the Pentagon released Navy videos of unidentified flying objects, otherwise known as UFOs. These videos were taken by onlooking naval officers who in the video express their awe of the machines. The objects were said to have defied physics and appeared and disappeared out of nowhere.

After the release of the videos, many companies and organizations were founded to research the phenomenon, including To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences. The U.S. Space Force had been created just months prior,December of 2019, to the release of these videos, making me wonder if they had planned to release them.

Growing up in a Christian household I never believed in Aliens. I thought that God created Earth and the other planets and the Bible said nothing about other life forms. My Grandmother, though, was a huge believer. She is a fan of all conspiracies and when I would stay up late at night, I could hear her watching shows about Aliens and how to explain their existence. Most of the things like this she believed in seemed completely impossible to be, but now, I am not so sure. 

Another thing I grew up with was novels and movies about government corruption. I had always believed that the Government had secrets, but they just kept them to keep the people safe. When these videos were released, it made me question the American Government more. I spent weeks wondering if they were hiding anything else so important from citizens. After all of this thinking, I came to the conclusion that they had their reasons to keep the videos secrest for all those years. They have to use their power to protect the American people in the way they think is best. If these videos would have been released sooner, there is no telling the havoc they could have wreaked on the feeling of safety in America and around the world. 

As a child, I always wanted to be able to be among the stars. I had stars all over my ceiling so when I went to sleep, I could see them and remember how beautiful they were and how large space was. When I was in third grade, there was an essay contest for Scholastic. I can’t remember the prompt, but I do remember my essay. I wrote about how space exploration could be the future of humanity. Even now I think that there are many untapped resources for us to use if we could only get to them. I do not predict that humans will ever be able to fully live on other planets, but I think that we can get help from them. Space could hold solutions to many of Earth’s biggest problems. If Aliens do exist, maybe that could be a good thing. Maybe humans will be able to peacefully interact with them and learn things that we could bring back and use to heal the earth and its inhabitants.

Realistically, I understand that it will take years, maybe decades, before we even have the technology to come close to aliens. Also, I know that humans do not have a good history of interacting with other races, so I don’t expect interspecies interactions to go completely smoothly either, but if we can succeed, there is no telling how much we could benefit from it. 

The issue on everyone’s mind right now is CoronaVirus. In such a short time, the world has changed so drastically. We have started creating vaccines, but we still have no idea how they will truly affect humanity. I am not trying to say that in the stars we could find a cure for this disease or others that we are riddled with, but perhaps we can find solutions and antidotes for other dilemmas we face living on Earth.

I know that the Government is keeping other secrets and that in many cases in politics, shady and illegal things happen. I am not so trusting to believe that everyone who holds power is good enough not to abuse it. With that though, comes the belief that some people are truly good and want what is best for others. I do not plan on making my career in politics, but I would like to learn more about it so I can be more aware. Many times business and politics can overlap, so it would be great for my future to have a good background understanding on how our state and country run. 

The way I think has been forever changed by the thought of Aliens existing. We could learn so much from them now that the government has finally released the information. Hopefully in the future, we as the human race can learn from each other and maye from extraterrestrials.