The very framing of this question is problematic. Let’s rephrase that “Do you believe there’s life on other planets?” Answering yes, becomes much less controversial. Now, if one were to ask, do you believe beings from other planets are here on earth, that’s a different scenario.
For the record, I believe life even intelligent life exists on some other planets. I don’t believe that they are living among us because it’s a movie scenario, that if ever beings from other planets landed on earth, they would automatically disguise themselves as humans for nefarious purposes.
How arrogant are we? Some actually entertain the idea, that beings advanced enough to build a starship (for lack of a better word), would be unable to stick the landing and also come here to “steal” from us and commit other nefarious acts. As per usual, we ascribe to others the way we would act in the same situation.
It is interesting to note that in these scenarios, though we haven’t developed any interstellar travel vehicles ourselves, we are always the smarter species, who outwits and beats the “aliens”. Yeah good luck with that, we lose wars to bacteria and diseases, but we’ll whip them “aliens”.
It is interesting also that in movies where we are the ones going to other planets/world, the concepts are usually less violent? Star Trek, Star Wars etc… but in the ones were others land here, usually they are evil and destructive V, them, the blob etc… but it’s the same mindset really (to me). In the scenarios where we go to other worlds, we are the aliens thus we present ourselves as good in order not to be judged the way we judge (via movies) aliens who land here. Fascinating really.
Now why am I on an alien writing spree today? I was reminded of chump’s promise to release the UFO files while watching the news and again it sent shivers down my spine. One of the saddest revelations of this era, is how little we are prepared to receive anything remotely resembling truth. If the files said: Aliens walk among us, we would see a slew of murders of neighbors, friends, strangers…. If the files said: no proof that aliens walk on this planet, more conspiracy theories would emerge and submerge us.
Most of us hold two contradicting edicts in our minds “Question everything” “Have faith and believe”… and we mostly only question things we don’t agree with and have believe in things we can’t prove. We do our own research only in search of answers that confirm our biases. We are woefully unwilling to accept discomforting truths.
There are a couple of reasons most movies portray aliens as “baddies”, one as stated above is because we project and two is because we as a species are inherently tired of our divisions and dream of a common enemy to unite us, because we are unwilling to do the work that would remove our prejudices and unite ourselves.
So, do you believe other life forms exist? And what’s your take?
#TheAmericanHaitianPoet
Muriel Vieux – April 1st, 2026 – ©All rights reserved