Repository for the Unknown

Do you remember one of the last major scenes of the first Indiana Jones movie in "Raider’s of the Lost Ark"? In the scene a wooden box is being wheeled in a dark warehouse. The camera pulls back and reveals a vast warehouse filled with wooden crates. The wooden box is destined for oblivion.

The former television show, “The X Files”, was rooted in fact. As in any bureaucracy,  unknowns encountered that present no solution or reasonable hypothesis, have their circumstances chronicled and filed. The file goes to its own filing oblivion. The files are maintained against a time when a better understanding might be available. The X Files was based on taking a fresh look at some of these cases with a more open mind.

Today it would seem that the best approach would be to digitize these files and apply “data minding” tools. The effort may point out connections that escape conventional analysis. However the more bizarre, the more likely the files would be top secret and allowed viewing by only selected eyes. The other condition that would restrict access would be circumstances where potentially controversial blame was assigned. As always, secrecy is the enemy of understanding.

Another modern approach would be to "crowd source" for answers. This supposes you could get around the secrecy. The retained unexplained files over the last hundred years have probably grown to be a great volume. I imagine the mosaic of circumstances represented in these files suggest "reality" is not as conventional wisdom would have us believe. If you question reality, then by definition you are questioning religion and culture. These are two things sacrosanct wherever you might be in the world.

I think the files will point out a more fundamental truth. That we suffer from a "god" complex in believing we can fathom the intricacies of creation. Understandings derived from the files might force us to come face-to-face with an uncomfortable truth.  That human intellect is only so capable and there is a deeper realm we simply lack the intelligence to ever understand.