Recently I lunched with a friend who occasionally attends a suburban place of worship. She told me how she had failed to find any spiritual satisfaction in her faith. This did not surprise me. Much of what passes off as religion in current Western civilization is not designed to provide any fulfilment.

These religions are not antidotes or islands of respite from materialist life outside the church or the temple. They are in fact merely there to egg on western consumer society and further push the interests of empty materialism. Plastic religions for plastic societies.

Spiritually satisfied people are not economically productive: Angry, disappointed ones are. Making people disillusioned is the very purpose of these faiths and those genuinely seeking answers or meaning in life beyond the newest flat screen television might be advised to shop elsewhere.

This situation takes its toll on youth more so than any other group. Encouraged to indulge in self-destructive behaviour by consumer culture and peer group pressure, so many escape into the arms of organised religion only to realise that the rot outside their place of worship is much the same as the rot inside.  

If it isn’t fatally flawed organised religion injecting young people with a sense of hopelessness it is the valueless nihilism of modern science. Then there is celebrity culture to make them feel worthless and ugly in relation to their idols. All of this makes perfect sense when one realises that bitterness and disappointment fuel western consumer society like nothing else.

Little seems to be changing for the better in this respect. It seems the bigger the promises made by religious groups, the bigger disappointment later on down the track. It also seems that humanity cannot escape the inherent selfishness hardwired into it, even when attempting to be spiritual or altruistic.

The vision of a UFO signifies for many the idea that if humanity is fatally flawed, some group somewhere else might not be. Many UFO researchers are quick to point out that visiting aliens might not have good intentions towards us. This might well be the case: however recent developments don’t suggest such a scenario.

The UK just closed down its UFO investigation department within its Ministry of Defence. Does this suggest the British no longer regard UFOs as a subject of serious study? Probably not. Like the Canadians, it is more likely that they have concluded that UFOs don’t pose a threat and therefore should not be a matter of national security.

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