Abducted by Aliens

Or How I Learned to Cope With High Strangeness, Government Harassment, and

My Mother (a True Story)
by Chuck Weiss

Available as a FREE e-Book at AbductionSite.com.

368 Pages, Color Photos & Fully Indexed
Contact Chuck at AlienAbductionTheBlog@mail.com.

157: When Different Cultures Meet

It is thought that whenever a lower culture meets a higher culture, the lower culture will begin to
disintegrate as it gives up its old values and way of doing things for the values of the higher culture and
its new technologies. For many this is a bad thing, especially when it comes to alien contact.

In the early 1950’s, the CIA went to the Brookings Institute and asked them to consider the ramifications
if humans were to come in contact with extraterrestrials. A prestigious panel that included famed
anthropologist Margret Mead was formed to consider the question. Their final report forecasted cultural
disaster following any exchanges with a more advanced civilization, and sited the examples of
Montezuma of the Aztecs and the American Indian to prove their point.

It has long been held that when Cortez and his men landed in the new world, Montezuma thought him to
be their ancient god, Quetzalcoatl, long prophesized to return and welcomed him with open arms. It was
a fatal mistake, which resulted in his murder and the ultimate destruction of the Aztec civilization. And
of course we all know how well the natives fared after Columbus “discovered” America.

Should lesser cultures be preserved intact like some museum piece, existing in isolation along side older
and more advanced cultures? Or, do cultures naturally evolve by meeting other cultures and exchanging
ideas? That appears to have been the way they developed here on Earth. As ancient civilizations
expanded their original borders, they would bump into other established civilizations and either go to
war, or trade their goods along with their cultural values and ideas.

I videotaped a documentary on TV back in the ‘80s called “First Contact.” It was about three brothers
from Australia, who hiked deep into the interior of New Guinea in the early 1930s looking for gold. The
documentary used film footage and photographs of the expedition shot by the brothers themselves.
They took ninety “civilized” natives with them as carriers, and after they scaled what had thought before
to be an impenetrable mountain range, they discovered several valleys nestled in between the mountains.
These valleys were home to several million people who had never seen anyone beyond the mountains.
The individual tribes they met kept within their boundaries, except when they went to war with a
neighbor, and none knew of the world beyond their protected valleys. The brothers weren’t scientists, so
they weren’t concerned about cultural contamination. They even took a young boy from one of the
tribes on an airplane ride back to a city on the coast and then returned him to his family five days later,
after showing him all sorts of modern wonders.

At the end of the documentary, the producers went back to the tribe as it now exists and showed them
the completed film. Many of the elders of the tribe were children when the first white men came to
their valley and recognized themselves in the video, including the boy who flew in the airplane. It was
an emotional experience for all. Some cried, others laughed in embarrassment to see themselves as they
were long ago, naked, unabashed and naive about the modern world that existed around them. On one
hand, the tribe had lost its old standards and values, but on the other it had gained knowledge of a larger
universe. Isn’t the gaining of new knowledge supposed to be a good thing?

Are we to morn the loss of a culture as we do the loss of a species? I would hope not. A culture serves
its people and shouldn’t be confused with the people themselves. It is fitting and proper that it evolves
to meet the changing needs of its citizenry. People will readily discard what no longer works to accept
new, more productive ways of doing things. It’s ludicrous to find nobility in an era when we beat our
clothing on the rocks, when now we clean them in stainless steel washing machines. If you had asked
those New Guinea natives if they would like to return to their old ways and leave the modern world
behind, I’m sure that they would have responded in the negative. Who wants to go back to “beating
their clothes on the rocks?”

NOTE: A prestigious three-day international conference was held in Washington, DC, in May of 1996,
on the subject of Earth's proper response, if and when it’s publicly revealed that we’re being visited by
alien cultures. The "When Cosmic Cultures Meet" conference featured presentations by scientists,
academics, governmental leaders, research professionals, military officers, journalists and religious
spokespersons. Those who attended were in agreement of the need to prepare for extraterrestrial
contact.

National security specialist, John L. Petersen of the Arlington Institute, compared the current shift in
society and dramatic breakthroughs in energy sources and new technologies to the shift from the Middle
Ages to the Enlightenment. Esteemed researcher and journalist, Michael Hesemann, speculated that ET
contact could spark a second Copernican Revolution.1

1
Nexus Magazine, Volume 3, #3 (April-May 1996)

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LINKS (Cut and paste into your browser.)

Margaret Mead = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mead
John L. Petersen = http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/tai/john-l-petersen
Michael Hesemann = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hesemann
documentary = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Contact_(1983_film)