I love this season; it comes round so habitually, bringing with it joy and amusement. Not spring, mind you. But UFO season, Aliens Amongst Us Season. It comes around about once every presidential administration or so, like cicadas of the mind.

But take care — UFOists are a volatile group, denying that aliens ever have, or ever will, visit Earth is like waving an orange MAGA hat before a liberal bull. This is because in the popular mind it is now canon that UFO means UFOAA! (UFOs Are Aliens!). The “Unidentified” part long ago trampled under the “Star Trekization” of the nation. We love the fiction, not so much the science.

The human mind itself propels us towards such beliefs. It doesn’t like unidentified anomalies; it treats the unidentified as unexplainable, and tries to solve the mystery. But only with what the human mind already knows. And as Captain Kirk once said, “I don’t like mysteries, they give me a belly-ache, and I got a doozy.”

In ancient times thunder and lightning was made by Zeus, and later Thor. Earthquakes, disease, droughts were all explained by gods, witches, and spirits. Later the one God created all.

As the scientific method has explained natural phenomenon, our minds still seek answers to the larger mysteries of life and existence. As the philosopher once said: Humans have immortal minds trapped in a mortal body. So, we cannot help but imagine what is “out there” — both alive while staring at the stars, and after death.

What if we take the UFOistas at their words, or testimonies: to imagine that a civilization has survived long enough, and evolved far enough to achieve interstellar travel and yet they do so to kidnap earthlings and stick probes up our butts? To discover what?

A civilization that advanced would perceive earthlings as we perceive those mud-covered builders erecting the first ziggurat 6,000 years ago. Fascinating, as Mr. Spock would say; but hardly a culture they would recognize as advanced. What could they possibly want or need from us and our “stone tools and mudbricks?”

But most importantly, our fascination with aliens also shows the limits of our imaginations — what our brains can recognize: an unknown civilization shows up one day, possessing unimaginable technology, and before you know it, they enslave us and steal our stuff!

Is that not the very definition of European colonial conquest from 1500-1900, especially in the New World?

Popular culture anticipates that aliens will arrive as conquerors of “the final frontier” because the world we live in was made by the conquering of frontiers. It is no coincidence that the sun never set on the British Empire when HG Wells published “War of the Worlds” — in the very same year American frontier was declared closed. Conquered.

Humanity needs a large order of humble pie in all of this. We have just now peeked beyond our horizon with the Hubble and Webb telescopes. (And the intrepid explorer out there chugging along like the Amtrak local!) When it comes to galactic exploration we are as clueless as Columbus, setting out for cardamon in India and bumbling upon the other half of the world! But our imaginations still warn “There be monsters there.”

The widespread acceptance that aliens are amongst us shows the human race still craves a superior being out there who will one day appear to either save us or enslave us. Still, heaven or hell.

To be clear: there is not one scintilla of verifiable evidence that any extraterrestrial has ever visited us. Just us it is with Bigfoot, and God, faith, is the sole foundation for such beliefs.

But unlike with the religious, UFOAAists insist that the absence of evidence is proof of existence. And they are a prickly bunch when contradicted by science.

Myself, I believe the universe teems with life but not, alas, our Milky Way. I think we’ll learn that galaxies are like human wombs; they produce one life form at a time, though twins or triplets are not unknown. And they produce more than one form over the life of the womb. So, while we may have an older sibling out there, even a younger one; we will not be warping to Vulcan for the vegan, nor toughing up our kids at Klingon camp.

And this is what truly frightens us: that we are not alone in the universe, but we are alone in our vast galaxy. And for now, that is the same emotion.

Of all the sci-fi thrillers I love, there is one that confronts this deep need to find solace “out there” and not down here. At the end of the disaster flic “Don’t look up” as the killer comet impacts Earth, the scientists who tried to warn us have a last meal together. As the ground shakes and the killer shock-wave rushes in, the main character eulogizes: “We really did have everything we needed. Didn’t we?”

And we do. Right here on Earth. And that is what we have to believe in. Ourselves. Because we truly do have everything we need. We just have to evolve our imaginations.

Joe Gannon lives in Easthampton.