What Strange Lights in the Sky Can Teach Us About Ourselves

BY PAUL MARTINEZ | DEC 20

It starts innocently enough: someone reports seeing unusual lights hovering over a suburban cul-de-sac in New Jersey. The media calls them “drones,” social media amplifies the chatter, and suddenly we’re all speculating—could they be new military tech, a natural phenomenon, or something else entirely? On the surface, it might feel like another fleeting curiosity for the 24-hour news cycle. But there’s a larger, more profound opportunity here that we risk overlooking.

In an era where we’re inundated by pressing issues—climate challenges, political gridlock, social inequalities—these mysterious lights remind us that our human concerns are set against a much vaster, largely unexplored backdrop. Put simply, they offer us a chance to lift our gaze from the minutiae of daily life and see our own systems with fresh eyes.

When we seriously consider the possibility of other intelligent life—even as a hypothetical—something subtle yet radical happens: we begin to examine the assumptions that govern our society. We start to ask big-picture questions. For instance, what would a civilization entirely unlike ours look like? Would it be bound by 40-hour workweeks, or would the very notion of “work” be meaningless to them? Would they rely on money, or would their resources flow freely in a system beyond our understanding of economy and scarcity?

Such questions are not about confirming alien existence. Rather, they’re about using the possibility—no matter how remote—as a lens to reflect on the way we organize our own lives. So much of what we take as a given is actually a product of specific historical, cultural, and economic conditions. We tend to forget that concepts like productivity quotas, hierarchical governance, or transactional relationships aren’t universal laws; they’re customs we’ve inherited and seldom challenge.

This shift in perspective, instigated by something as ephemeral as unidentified lights in the sky, can be deeply productive. If we recognize that another form of intelligent life might arrange its societies in ways that are more just, more sustainable, or more fulfilling, why not scrutinize our own choices?

Maybe we can learn from the very idea of them, even in their absence. Maybe we don’t need extraterrestrials to land on the White House lawn to realize that our distribution of resources is skewed, our relationship to technology is fraught, and our disregard for the environment is short-sighted.

In other words, acknowledging that we might not be alone in the universe can help us feel less alone in the responsibility we bear for our planet and each other. It pushes us to think beyond business-as-usual solutions and incremental reforms. If we’re willing to entertain entirely new frameworks and philosophies—alien or otherwise—we might find the inspiration to overhaul our own systems from within.

The lesson isn’t that we should pin our hopes on contact with distant galaxies. It’s that the mere act of broadening our intellectual horizons can spark a reevaluation of how we live right now. We have a rare chance to apply this expanded perspective to our toughest challenges: climate adaptation, economic justice, technological ethics, and social well-being.

So, let’s not reduce these sightings to a punchline or a passing curiosity. Let’s treat them as a prompt. Even if these lights turn out to be just advanced drones, the conversation they’ve launched can still guide us toward introspection. We can use this moment to ask, “What if our cherished systems are not the pinnacle of civilization, but one version among countless possibilities?”

The skies may never yield definitive answers, but the questions they inspire could enrich our collective imagination and, ultimately, the way we choose to live on this planet—together.