Clouds of Unknowing is a weekly newsletter by @original_chills, mining the present for unserious sermons, other worlds, and little rituals.
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“STUPENDOUS DISCOVERY. SKY PHYSICALLY ABOLISHED. EARTH ONLY A MINUTE AWAY FROM SIRIUS. NO MORE FIRMAMENT.”
Antonin Artaud, There Is No More Firmament (1933)
The Lesson
If aliens happened to be listening to radio transmissions from Earth, it’s possible that one of the first things they would encounter is the voice of Adolf Hitler, at the 1936 Olympic Games, one of the widest television broadcasts at the time. So speculated Carl Sagan in the 1985 novel, and later film, Contact. But is this really plausible?
The low-powered signal may have made it through the ionosphere, but would most likely become incomprehensible as sound or image within a relatively short distance from the Earth. Even a high-powered signal deliberately targeted at a particular place would need a receiver dish hundreds of miles wide once it had gone a few hundred lightyears.
Still, it says something about our notions of interstellar communication that this idea should be so appealing, should make such a good hook. It seems to illustrate one particular role of the extraterrestrial in our collective imaginary, a sort of universal benchmark for humanity, either guiding us to righteousness, or, more sinisterly, punishing our transgressions.
Perhaps in this ethically minded alien we find a reasonable replacement for the Abrahamic God, who had a difficult twentieth century by all accounts. If only we could find our friendly Big (Br)Other out there in the cosmos, we would surely end our petty disagreements and finally learn to cooperate as a species.
Maybe. It’s certainly a nice idea to imagine that we’re evolving to a higher state, on the way to our rightful place in the universal Network of Love. In fact, I’m going to add that one to my toolkit, for very occasional use, if my inner skeptic doesn’t mind.
The Logbook
As you may have guessed from the above, I’ve been re-reading Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati, about the author’s experiments in ‘deliberately induced brain change’. Among other interesting results, these led him to believe he was receiving a series of transmissions from a friendly extraterrestrial in the neighbourhood of Sirius, the dog star, starting around the 23rd of July 1973. In honour of the day, I’ve recorded a mix that plays around with ideas of extraterrestrial contact - after all, if aliens could listen to The Archers, don’t you think they would?
A Little Ritual
Take a walk at dusk on a clear night, and find the highest point in your neighbourhood. If you can, sit down and let your gaze rest loosely on whatever is in front of you. Be peripherally aware of the vastness of the sky, and let any other sensory perception, including thought, come to you, without grasping at it. Sit for as long as you like.
I hope you enjoyed this issue of the Clouds of Unknowing — please reply, comment, or share if you wish! And remember that communication is possible only between equals.
Look into a telescope
to see what I can
see:
baffled by the sight of
constellations
watching me.
Luna Anton Wilson, The Network