SETI is of course the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligences. Now I have no problem with listening for interstellar messages. That actually seems prudent and quite bright. But earthlings should only listen and never speak. That is, we should never send out our own messages to extra terrestrial intelligences.
Why not? Some might ask. Maybe they’ll teach us things with two way communication. Well first of all they may teach us things without our input so we stand to get something while giving away nothing about ourselves. Now that’s a win. I say we must never give away more. Why? Because even a cursory glance shows us as being violent bastards.
No alien is going to want to give us the cure for all of our current power woes. Say they know how to get nuclear fusion done cheaply and efficiently. What might they think we might do with such power? Why when we invented nuclear fission the first thing we did was take out Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Cheap nuclear fusion might be enough to take out a continent or a world. Clearly we aren’t fit yet to have cheap nuclear fusion.
Maybe they’ll give us the plans for a starship. And let humanity spread its violence out to other worlds.
What did whites do when the New World peoples of earth showed weakness by dying of Old World diseases? They repopulated the areas with whites as the new majority. The whites even showed that they knew it at the time. Remember those stories of giving infected blankets to North America’s indigenous peoples?
Maybe we wouldn’t be so violent with intelligences that are unlike us. But usually on earth that has made us more violent and likely to lash out. Neanderthals were less like us. What happened to them? It looks like they were wiped out by people. Perhaps we can claim ignorance on this one – it happened in prehistory.
But just look at all the genocides on ‘the other’. The Armenian genocide, the holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the Bosnian genocide and even currently – the genocide of Yazidis, the list goes on and on. Is a xenocide so unlikely by humans? Especially with the ‘proof’ of the missing Neanderthal.
If I were an intelligent alien, I would never, ever give humans more power than they can amass on their own. By the way if you’re a science fiction writer, why not write the truth – a far future where humans invade another race’s territory for, well, their territory? This constant lie of aliens invading Earth has a foundation in what humans expect of a higher power.
I suspect that intelligent aliens lie low. Maybe they settle a small area of nearby habitable planets. But they lie low and protect themselves from the violent filth that exists in the rest of the universe. Like humanity.
Still, humanity can listen. Perhaps some race of intelligent bunnies has evolved without predators. So perhaps there are some truly good hearted intelligent aliens. Before they travel to us and find out our true violent nature, they might send us directions to improve our lot in this tough universe.
Let’s just hope that after we don’t hunt down those intelligent bunnies for sport.
