LESSONS FROM A PASSERBY: AI ATLAS COMET AND UFOS; Is it real or maybe make believe?

Today the interstellar visitor, Ai- Atlas Comet is closest to the Earth's Sun.

For months, videos, articles, podcasts, and reels have been buzzing with ideas of what the strange object "really" was.  Some portrayed the visitor as a horrible advancing alien attack force, some as an ancient relic of a long deep culture now in an endless loop through the cosmos.  Still others, freely manipulated data, images, and personalities to present - for some unknown reason to date - chilling, frightening, and conflicting opinions. 

Stepping back to look at the furor, brings some things into clear perspective. The panorama of social media are both comedic and terrifying. 

Yeats wrote in his poem about history, The Second Coming, these most evocative words - "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity...." [emphasis added]

It is apparent the globe is currently in that time of "things falling apart".  

Once traveling the wilderness of the old west, I happened upon a bleached and ancient wooden wagon wheel.  It' hub cracked and rotted away, the spokes broken and splintered.  In my mind I could envision the fracture of that crucial central hub that held the wagon together and allowed it to roll onward mile after mile. Once it, or one of the spokes was compromised, the result was inevitable.  The center could no longer support the weight and action of the wheel. It collapsed and broke apart. 

Surveying some of the sources commenting about the strange visitor, and viewing some of the images, reveals more about the occupants of planet Earth than anything about any potential aliens. 

First, it is clear that it is very simple for undocumented, unsourced, and unvetted stories and videos to flood social media as alleged news.

Second, it is very easy for these stories to manipulate public thinking.

Third, this manipulation is the produce of several factors: a) a lack of authoritative trusted news sources, b) a low level of critical thinking skills among all levels of society, b) an absence of strong information literacy skills across all levels of society, c) multiple voices heard without discrimination and being perceived as having equal quality or value ("The Age of the Amateur" from  Jean M Twenge's, Generation Me - Revised and Updated: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before)

Fourth, it is increasingly simple for artificial intelligence to mimic images and audio to duplicate authoritative persons (government leaders, scientists, and others) and thereby potentially control the narrative of any event, generate fear and anxiety, create false divisions and controversy.  The level of reality in current technology is the stuff of horror films.

Fifth, the voices emerging via comments are also interesting.  They appear to fall into some distinct groups that are largely vague in definition, leadership, or guiding beliefs. 

 (a) a wide, diverse voice expressing a broad spectrum religious-spiritual-metaphysical message. Ultra conservative traditional views to the most extreme mystical beliefs.  Comments range from "The Lord is coming back", "Consciousness is shifting", "New frequencies are in process," "I believe..." and others.

(b) a wide and diverse voice expressing deeply held beliefs in alleged programs, conspiracy theories, and alternative concepts such as "Project Blue Beam", a Fake Moon Landing, and a Flat Earth.

(c) a die-hard response of all things seen or heard are the product of our own (government and military) secret projects, or projects of some clandestine agency, and similar assertions.  These tend to use a similar rhetoric as that used in the 1940s through the 1960's.  Sometimes tweaked to update them but always similar in being so secret no proof can be found and what is found is always taken at face value despite its lack of historical context or additional evidence. 

Sixth, a widespread lack of basic science, nature, mathematics, and environmental realities exists.  Society is increasingly tunnel visioned to the actions of a digital display. Social face-to-face interactions are disappearing, conversational skills, listening skills, comprehension skills, and emotional intelligence skills are decaying.  This results in believing everything seen, said, and argued.  Everything. No filters, no balance, no evaluations, and no standards of measurement.  This does not bode well.

All of these set against the backdrop of a push for disclosure, punctuated with international and national conflict and unrest, and a steady dollop of distraction in every form and shape.  

The bottom line seems to be someone - or some group - is playing fast and loose with human minds about the very nature of reality.  The center is cracked, the spokes of the wheel are crumbling...

Things fall apart...our challenge may be...can we put it back together again?