by Thang Tran
Throughout history there have been several great monument or structures built all over the world where the fact that it exists is worthy enough of praise. These are things such the Great Wall of China, Stonehenge, The pyramids, and the Colossus of Rhodes. However, these monuments have stood the test of time and are stable enough to visit or examine closely with major detail. The subject of this blog post is about a far lesser feat of Crop Circles. Crop circles are flattened parts of crops fields that make a shape where from a distance, makes a strange pattern that are believed to be landing sites for alien life or messages sent to us. These started when two men in the 1970s were inspired by flying saucer sighting and decided to make their interpretation of that to fool he masses (Margry and Roodenberg, 2007). Information can be found about these circles can be found in several interviews with the ones who’ve made them and are documented in pictures from all around the world. People that may believe in these circles being other worldly may be tourist, alien enthusiasts, and spiritual people that may think these circles have abilities. These circles have been showing up in several fields since this time and have grown more complicated as the years progressed.
The facts have shown that these circles are real and do exist from time to time. It is their origin that is up for debate for some individuals. The main reason why people do not believe that they could have been made by human is because of their complexity and the scale of how large they are to see their whole pattern. However, time and time have shown that no matter how complex some of these circles are, there are ones that do show up and claim credit to what they did and how did it like the original hoaxers did it in the 1970s and have been known to have copycats across the years.
The major cognitive factor that plays into people that legitimately believe that crop circles are otherworldly are most likely people just not taking into Occam’s razor and believing forces outside our grasp are making them rather just people making them with careful planning and tools. There are also people that look for circles just for the intricacies of the circles and do not believe in the alien aspect and love the art of the circle itself. They may not be misinformed, just not believing of the human ability to try to trick others. There are some people who just do not believe in simple logic vs. other worldly powers.
A part of the social contribution to the belief might be the general belief of alien invader or visitors inspiring the shape of their vessels and the shapes of the circles as well. The time of the original crop circles in the 1970s could have been context as to why the news of the circles spread around like wildfire. Even if it was proven multiple times that pranksters have done them, it gives attention to the farmlands in general so the farmers benefit from them.
Over the recent years the focus of the crop circles being made by aliens have died down throughout the years. Most crop circles have just been spectacles and works of art rather than the supernatural. There are also cultural reasons that are associated with other crop circles in countries outside the United States, these reasons may come from old stories, religion or other myths of the land that aren’t aliens. People in the United States in particular deal overcomplexity with the matter and that is where most of the modern believers of the source of crop circles are.
References
Peter Jan Margry; Herman Roodenburg (2007). Reframing Dutch Culture: Between Otherness and Authenticity. Progress in European Ethnology (illustrated ed.). Ashgate Publishing. pp. 150–51.
I believe crop circles is an interesting extraordinary belief and I enjoyed reading this post. I think it’s important that you pointed out the role of the media and how popularity makes a belief more prevalent. There is reason crop circles are not as popular anymore, and I know that alien abduction stories and UFO’s are not either. If the public is not hearing about these things over and over, it becomes less available and less likely.
Please delve into more research on the matter of crop circles, aliens and the supernatural phenomena before coming to such a hasty conclusion. Visit http://www.roundtownufosociety.com and also research Jeff Wilson, who is a researcher on recent activity. Your belief is quite common, though, but there is a lot of availability in all the subjects online if you care to search further.
This is a belief that even I still kinda believe! I simply can’t fathom how they appear out of no where overnight when they seem like they would take a long time to execute by humans. Now, this isn’t to say I believe aliens are doing it, i’m just saying I don’t know if I fully believe that they are man made…
This was a good topic to write on! I remember as a kid, the movie Signs came out. I watched it and it definitely freaked young me out. If you have not seen or heard of it, it is a movie about crop circles that start to show up in a family’s farm and aliens start to invade and get into the home. It is accompanied with the classic reactions like foil hats on their heads to protect them. You make a good point about how some of the “believers” may really just be interested in the vastness and complexity of the crop circles, rather than thinking they are from aliens.
This extraordinary belief seems really bizarre, its interesting how people are able to create theories out of anything. But i do think this one is so strange because it can easily be proven false, by simply visiting a crop circle, there is also a lot of information about them online and how they are created so it seems a bit off that people would believe that they are a landing area for aliens. It shows how sometimes several different conspiracies end up creating even more of them.
I agree with your opinion, but I think why people still believe in extraordinary beliefs like drop circle is that they did not check out the information online to see how are those drop circles are creatred. Instead, they blindly believe something interesting and shares with others. For example, if they share the drop circles in a group very exicitingly, probably the group members will conform instead of questions. they do not want to be the one who speaks out the fact when others find it pretty interesting and all conform.
This is an interesting belief. I have heard of crop circles before, but I never really knew what all people believed about them. I can see why people think that aliens or other creatures created these just because of their massive size and interesting shapes. It seems hard to believe that they are man-made especially when they seem to pop up over night.
I really liked this post because I have never heard of crop circles before. I think that its so crazy to think that if people just realized sooner that these circles were from humans themselves, the whole belief would not be an entity.