UFOs, Dark Matter and Ghosts – What have they in Common?

Over the decades of my life, I have read much about UFOs and ghosts, and lately, about dark matter.  After all that, I have one question:  what practical application do they have in my life?  Or yours?

To be sure, I could ask the same question about the Himalaya Mountains, the Galapagos Islands, and ancient Greek plays.  I have no doubt in my mind that those things exist, but I cannot think of any practical effect that any of them have had on my life.  But UFOs (etc), even though impractical to me, are in a different category.

By contrast, electricity has a major impact in my life.  So also, do less obvious things, such as quantum physics (transistors) and General Relativity (global positioning technology).  They change the way I live.

There is significant dispute as to whether UFOs are space aliens, or whether ghosts are real spirits of the afterlife.  There is even doubt among some well-qualified scientists as to whether dark matter exists.  These are not the same, however, as electricity, in terms of how they affect my life.  They don’t.

I have my opinions about them.  I will even go so far as to say that I lived several years in a house that showed very strong evidence of being haunted (but nothing like in the movies).  In that respect, I have to admit that there was a practical effect in my daily life, psychologically, but we who lived there adjusted to it and got on.  We didn’t move away, for example, until other, unrelated factors caused us to do so.

Even the ghosts, which we regarded as real (and still do) were far less important to us than electricity.

By contrast, there is much practical benefit to be gained by studying the physical sciences, and music, and such things as carpentry and automobile mechanics.  Indeed, civilization depends on them.

But, ghosts?  UFOs?  Dark matter?

I will grant you that, it is conceivable—that at some point in future time, a discovery or an event may reveal such things to be important, and worthy of intense activity.  For now, however, they are like the existence of super-volcanoes, or meteor impacts, which could wreak havoc on Biblical scales.  Even though we know that they are real, there is little or nothing we can do about them.  We don’t change the way we live.

What progress has been made, really, in the study of ghosts?  Even my extended, personal experience with them has not led me to produce any useful result from all that I have read.  Likewise, with UFOs, even though the government has released film footage of them, to what avail?    And concerning dark matter, even the brainiest scientists in the world are at a standstill when it comes to producing any practical use for it—if it even exists.

We could discuss other topics, including the paranormal, with the same useless consequences.  Isn’t there a better way to spend our time?

Please don’t mistake this as a dismissal of the importance of pure research.  Much progress has been made as a result of inquiries that seemed to be useless at first, but then became important.  Perhaps such will be the case with UFOs, ghosts and dark matter.

If anything, my criticism of these three topics, is a proactive one.  The study of them should be pursued, but not in the manner they now are.  We seem to be spinning our wheels, expending much effort, but getting nowhere.

Heron’s steam engine was invented in the year ninety A.D., but was forgotten for over a thousand years, until someone took a practical approach to using the principle underlying it.  Someone saw a need, and applied steam power to meet that need.  It changed the course of history.

If I could do the same with UFOs, dark matter or ghosts, I would be wealthy, or at least famous.  I am not of that caliber intellectually.  But someone is.  Must we wait another thousand years?

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