> I know, I know--the question is "Is There Intelligent Life Down Here?" Yes,
> romantic that I am, I believe there is. What I find curious is our notion
> that if there is other intelligent life "out there" that it is more
advanced
> than we. Suppose it's the other way around? Suppose WE are the most
advanced?
One of the secret agendas of the SETI movement is to steal a march on human
development. IE, we humans don't seem up to the task of managing our society
and technology, so let's discover someone smarter than us that we can crib
notes from. If we're the most advanced, we have a lot more pressure put on
US, because now WE have the reponsibility to grow up, and stop expecting Deus
Ex Machina to solve our problems.
> The UFOlogists would have us believe that space farers have traveled
> unimaginable distances by some means not known to us, like jumping between
> places where folds in the space-time continuum touch, or some such thing.
> Supposedly they have found a way to bridge the distances, but we haven't
> found anything yet that exceeds the speed of light, which means that no
> matter how fast we travel it will take centuries of our time to reach even
> the closest star. And that assumes there's something to be found when we
get
> there, and if our own system/galaxy is typical, even when we do, the
> distances are still staggering.
The species that could face the distances and the time involved, knowing that
it would be a generations long voyage, and yet STILL make the trip would be a
very advanced species indeed... it would be one that had truly discovered to
think beyond itself.
Personalization of our problems is one of the greatest barriers to human
social progress. Why care about the environment, about your neighbor, about
your great grandchildren, about the future, etc, when you've got your own
personal issues to face? Ah, but the species which could accept that the
originators of a deep-space voyage would never live to benefit from it, yet
still do it... THAT is a truly alien concept for humans.
> Are other being studying us like lab specimens? Could be. Maybe they're
> amused by our puny efforts, condescending about our stage of development,
or
> as some have suggested, frightened by our tendency to kill anything we
don't
> understand, which is most of everything.
If an alien species is advanced enough to travel between worlds, come to
Earth, study us, and never be discovered, it has enough power and capacity
that it would not be 'frightened' of humans.
Studying us like lab specimens? I maintain that if such a thing like alien
abductions take place, they would not be done to study the abductee, but to
study the abductee's society reaction to the abduction.
Consider: your next-door neighbor comes to you, and says in an agonized
voice, 'I've been abducted, and horrible mental / physical / emotional things
were done to me!'. What would YOU do? Could it be that the captors are
really testing YOUR reactions, for empathy, paranoia, or whatever?
> Even tho I'd like to believe we have been and are continuing to be visited
> by beings more advanced than we are, the evidence is still far from
> convincing. I do believe, however, that the possibilities for other
> intelligent life among the billions of probable locations are endless, and
we
> are supremely arrogant to think we are the only ones around.
Hey, it's like that English colonialist said, 100 years ago...
'Justifications be damned, we have the Maxim gun'.
In essence, arrogant or not, intelligent life out there is moot until it
becomes part of the picture.
> So let's keep watching the skies.
If something truly big enough to matter comes along, we'll know it, watching
the skies or no.
-- JHB
> :-)
>
==
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