however, history seems to indicate to me that this would never actually be the case. i see it happening like this:

people aren’t necessarily very smart when it comes to new, unknown ideas/things. they see it as a challenge to what they’ve always thought/believed/known. that makes people uneasy and when people are uneasy, they tend not to rationalize their behavior, rather, they simply freak out. and let’s face it, most people are incredibly stupid these days. the smart ones, or at least the open-minded ones like myself, would be drowned out in a sea of in-bred regurgitators who are reacting not in a civilized way to something that would change our world and minds forever.

something that earth-shattering (pardon the pun) would not be taken philosophically by the majority of humans (or at least Americans).

again, i really hope we would see it as an opportunity to gain knowledge. but, it would drag down the patriarchal shape of religion and culture for industrialized nations. as non-religious as i am, i do think religion serves a great purpose in creating boundaries for people. it helps keep order in what would otherwise be a completely chaotic civilization. and if religion were suddenly gone, if everything we’d ever BELIEVED to be true was suddenly proven incorrect…well…i’m pretty sure it would cause anarchy, possibly even the apocalypse.

that’s why i’m of the opinion that UFO’s and aliens have been here before, they have visited us and our government is completely aware of it. but if people knew about it, all hell would break loose. so we continue to deny it. continue to ignore it. admission would cause chaos. things would never be the same.

In the 1980's the British Government used psychic viewers to explore this very issue by having trained psychics interviewing ordinary people and seeing their future responses. The results were fairly bleek – lots of fear and people fighting one another – real xenophobia kind of stuff. Separations between alien supporters and alien haters.