Social Belonging: The need for relationships, intimacy, and family.
Can [what] disrupt my relationships?
Will [what] interrupt my intimate interactions with others?
What will [what] do to the cohesion of my family?
When discussing governments, all of these questions take on new dimensions. At this level a government is no long a subset of population entrusted with rule over a large population, but is effectively an individual, who in turn is dealing with other individuals. This is also the level at which an overseeing body trying to curb the natural inclination of "might makes right" begins to have significant challenges, as some of the individuals involved can have greater personal might than the overseeing body, and could, in fact, have control over said body.
This is a critical concept, as we do not have a unified planetary government. Therefore, if one government 'individual' makes the declaration of [what], the questions above become highly relevant. How will the other governments react? Will those who considered themselves close friends with the revealing government feel slighted that [what] was kept from them? Will placated enemies become reinvigorated? Will it create a new division of 'haves' and 'have nots'?
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Esteem: The need for recognition, status, importance, and respect from others?
Will revealing [what] diminish my status?
Can [what] being discovered cause me to lose respect or standing among my peers?
How will my place in the community be impacted by [what] becoming known?
If [what] is known to others, am I still important to them?
This is the arena where behavior like "doubling down" occurs. Because governments are a collective, active over extended periods of time but enacted by a volume of different persons, as new waves of enactors enter the process, they may become aware of secrets held by prior enactors; such secrets may be no longer relevant in and of themselves, but the new group of enactors now begin maintaining the secret because of the fallout from revealing it. An excellent example of this is
Project MKUltra.
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Self-Actualization: The need to explore and realize potential.
Will [what] diminish or hamper me if revealed?
And here is where all other levels come together. Here the broadest, most complex look at [what] become important, ironically, the biggest question left is one of other, not self:
Is there a benefit if [what] is revealed, and is such a benefit desirable?
And with that, we have arrived at the beginning. We're in a small desert town in Nevada. It's 1984, and for the past several nights you've heard jets flying overhead in the dead hours; but not jets like you've heard before. Dull, quiet sounds, and always after dark. The curious are starting to gather nights just out of town to see what in the world is going on over at the Air Force test strip. Glimpses of planes by moonlight show small, triangular craft coming and going, but no such planes are ever seen by the light of day, on the ground or in the air. And it drags on, first for weeks, then for months, then for years. Big passenger planes have been running twice a day the whole time, and no formal statements are ever issued. What the hell is going on over there, and is it something as dangerous as the old atomic tests?
Well no. But you're right - the government is doing something over there they just don't want you to know about. So here we are. We have our original [what]: new stealth aircraft have been perfected, built, and are ready for use. But the government can't tell anyone. The Soviets would interpret such a weapon as a direct circumvention of their overwhelming investment in SAM technology - and they'd be right. It would prompt a wave of spending and research directed at countering a very real threat, which would be a threat in three ways:
1) it might lead to Soviet development of similar technology;
2) It could result in a successful counter to our stealth, rendering all the time and money spent useless, and
3) it would ruin another extremely successful program: getting the Soviets to bankrupt themselves chasing after our mythical space warfare programs. These ripple through the entire hierarchy of needs and present a very proper use of secrecy: to protect the public from itself by keeping them ignorant.
Now, the nature of secrets is that they can only be kept so long. Sometimes by design, sometimes by chance, and sometimes just by Force Majeure, all secrets have a shelf life before they are exposed. This is key, because when you have to keep a secret that requires an active effort, you have to ask the extremely important question of [why] does this secret need to be kept. So let's go back to our engineered [what], repeated here because this post has gone on long enough to require a sequel:
"Aliens exist, are actively observing us, and one or more governments on Earth are concretely aware of the situation, including the United States government."
As I demonstrated, there was a [why] to be found at literally every conceivable level of analysis; in fact, there were multiples all over. Even those presented, though, only scratch the surface, because of one critical factor that I think would send chills up the spine of anyone who thought about it:
My [what] was not only the most benign possible scenario for the assumption that UFOs do, in fact, exist and have or are actively visiting Earth, but was also in direct opposition to even the most basic commonality of UFO reporting. I do stress basic, as UFOs are not an area I have actively studied. I am open to other arguments for those who have devoted more time to various accounts and hypotheses.
Yet such reporting does not paint a benign picture. In fact, even the more "friendly" reports demonstrate a pattern of exploitation, abuse, and manipulation of their targets. I've never encountered a report where abduction was anything but against someone's will. Time is lost. Memories manipulated. Samples are taken/bodies are violated. Any pursuit is relentless and total.
In this light, the [why] of something like this being covered up makes even more sense. Suppose now the worst case about alien contact is true. What purpose would telling the public serve? It's not just an abstract question; this is the kind of secret that goes well beyond the examples I gave. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people would be aware of what's happening, and yet none of them have come forward to spill the beans. That means anyone in the know takes that knowledge extremely seriously - and if they do, it might well behoove us, for now, to do so as well.
