For centuries, humanity has looked into the night sky and imagined gods among the stars, monsters in the darkness, civilizations more advanced than ours. We have sent messages into the void and then held our breath, often with fear, wondering if someone out there might answer.
Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is a film that is both morally complex and incredibly entertaining. The phrase Disclosure Day suggests that some “truth” has been hidden from us, something enormous enough to rearrange our understanding of existence. And our first instinct, perhaps understandably, is fear.
We tend to imagine aliens as a threat because we understand power through the lens of our own history. When one civilization encounters another, the stronger civilization has too often conquered, exploited, or erased the weaker one. We know what humans have done to one another, and we know what we have done to the natural world. It is not unreasonable to look outward and assume that intelligence inevitably leads to domination.
But that assumption reveals more about our wounds than it does about the universe.
We have no evidence that intelligence would inevitably lead to violence. In fact, the existence of a civilization capable of crossing the vast distances between stars suggests something else entirely. To survive long enough to develop such technology, a species would need to learn coöperation, restraint, patience, and the ability to solve problems without destroying itself. I would guess that the most advanced civilizations are not the ones with the most powerful weapons, but the ones that learned not to use them.
This was why I ultimately found this film so hopeful and inspiring.
(The next paragraph contain spoilers. You may want to skip it if you have not yet seen the film and plan to.)
In the final scene, Courtney Grace, a real-life news anchor turned actress, reacts in real time to the big reveal as it is broadcast to a global audience. As video footage rolls, proving aliens are real, she reflects the raw humanity of anyone confronting a world-shaking event, shifting between shock, grief, and awe. “If you are watching this,” she tearfully states, “. . . you are not alone.” The broadcast forces those watching to confront the most persistent illusion of human history, the idea that we are the center of everything. We are not.
That truth should feel liberating, not frightening.
For all our differences, humanity remains a remarkably small family on a remarkably small planet, orbiting a remarkably ordinary star. We divide ourselves by borders, beliefs, languages, politics, and ancient grievances. We spend enormous amounts of energy arguing about who belongs to which group.
“Why would He make such a vast universe, yet save it only for us?”
Sister Maura, Disclosure Day
What might it mean to encounter a life-form that belonged to none of those categories? Perhaps, faced with something truly alien, we might recognize how much we share. The petty divisions that seem so absolute today might become a little more transparent.
Fear often grows in the absence of understanding. The unknown becomes a monster because we have not yet given it a face. But knowledge can be a path to freedom. To learn that we are not alone would be to replace the vastest mystery imaginable with connection, however uncertain, complicated, or distant.
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Maybe Disclosure Day is not the day the sky falls, but the day the sky opens. The day humanity looks up and realizes that the universe is not silent, that consciousness is not a singular accident, and that the story of life may be far larger, stranger, and more beautiful than we ever dared to imagine.
Hope is not the same as naivety. We should ask questions. Protect one another. Approach the unknown with humility. But we should also remember that fear is not the only appropriate response to the unfamiliar.
Wonder is another option. So is awe. So is hope.
Because the universe may be stranger than we imagined. But it may also be kinder.
