An article about the future based on an extremely succinct overview of the history of humanity. This is a science faction article that makes predictions of the future, specifically, when aliens arrive, or humans discover aliens. It is history, science fiction, stories, philosophies, science, enlightenment, opinion, foresight, and imagination all wrapped up in one non drugged induced article.
The odds are there are aliens somewhere in the vastness of space. The worst case for humans is that there are, and that they are considerably more advanced than we are. They could be anywhere from 50 to 50,000 years ahead of us, maybe even millions. We may one day be capable of intergalactic travel required to reach another galaxy. There might be another species already capable of doing it, that may have found us or be looking. Homo Sapiens (us) are developing technology at an unpresented rate; however, it will be a while until we can travel beyond our solar system and go where no human has gone before. It is also possible (not sure of the beating odds here) that an alien will find us before we find them. Are we prepared and what could we even do?
The universe is vast and has a gazillion galaxies and a gazillion more galaxies beyond where humans can get a remote look. The chances that humans are the only intelligent life form is more remote than winning a mega Powerball without a ticket. An intelligent life form is defined by being like us, arrogant I know, but a species capable of cooperation, expansion and one that bothers with hierarchy, development and dominate their planet(s). The odds that other sentient beings exist are higher than winning Powerball, but will they bother to evolve into a species interested in and capable of cooperation to the point of building a society? Then will that society/species be interested in and develop space travel? Then will they find us? Why develop space travel? To explore, conquer, spread your society, find resources, or in our case – because we must get off the rock we ruined.
Let us say an advanced species exists that has the will and capability to travel through space. Are they a threat to humans and everything we love about earth? God damned right they are! Think about humans and our desire to explore. It was not too long ago that the world did not know the world existed. When religious texts were written, no one had any idea that America existed or Australia, except the people there, and they had no idea about anyone else. People heard stories and merchants travelled, but you could only go as far as you could walk or ride. You could sail, but usually only to where you could see and get back from. Militaries ventured out to conquer and explorers travelled to claim. There were no benevolent tourists.
Why did humans begin exploration? Did we do it out of some noble cause to see the world and develop a greater understanding of the planet? No, we certainly did not. We did it to look for resources, to spread our version of civilization, to save people we met that looked a little different and convert them to our beliefs. We basically explored to look for what could help us in our own established world, to conquer larger areas to grow our own resources or to share our beliefs to control those we did come across who didn’t have the technology, cooperation and military power to stop us.
Humans spread around the world to conquer, control, exploit, spread beliefs, expand our known way of the world and to dominate others to exploit what resources we found. We did not see other humans as people like us, so why would aliens act any differently if they evolve and progress to the point of space travel.
We spread out around the globe about 60,000 years ago, but we settled and moved around areas in which we could survive. About 13,000 years ago we started agriculture, developed cooperation, then built armies, developed hierarchy, religion and militaries to protect what we had and take what we could. Even when we found somewhere new, we controlled it and took everything we could. Everyone did this. We believed we were helping those less advanced or less civilized and brought culture, religion, medicine and education. It was assimilate, cooperate or die. We usually massacred everyone and took everyone and everything. Then we learnt to colonize and keep the locals friendly and work with them. To keep the theft of resources and foster our expansion because working with, but in control of, was far more lucrative. Always to our benefit, to our standards, beliefs and our ways. We established fiefdoms to develop our own and protect ourselves from others.
Of course, we often improved education, medical standards, infrastructure, built roads, sewers, improved hygiene and imposed a better life on the locals. We improved life expectancy, brought more powerful monotheistic gods, more powerful militaries and we kept expanding and doing it for 12,000 years. We have slowed down over the last 1,000 years as the world is basically more in its current place and we have established countries, governments, and militaries. The world is more global, and everything is more similar worldwide than it ever has been. There is a miniscule number of remote societies and indigenous populations on every continent, but they are not the same. When a more developed society with a larger capacity to cooperate arrives and likes the look of what you have, you are finished. Many indigenous societies try to hold out some semblance of their traditions, but it takes effort, is slowing dying out and if they don’t, or do assimilate will slowly fade away.
Humans spread around the world when they could cooperate on a massive scale and even when they believed they were bringing a better life, bringing a better god and were just there to help, still managed to wipe out millions of people through guns, disease, industry and new values. A common humanism is only a new thing and not universal yet either.
Why would any alien visitor who is advanced enough to travel the galaxy be any different from us? For humans, it would be like, when the Spanish arrived in Mexico or the British in Australia. Hi everyone, we have this big flag and a cool spaceship and want to be your friends. We will keep you alive if you are of use to us and we can work together, if you work for us. We may even let you continue with your religions, customs and society, but we will try to educate you to our ways and how we got to be more advanced than you, which is obviously better because we have flags and guns and churches!
An advantage for humans is that if aliens arrived we might work together better as we would then realise that our differences do not matter when we face extinction. Our varied stories, our petty differences, our nationalism, our competitiveness, and our care of the world will fade into obscurity, as we do.
In every alien invasion movie created by Hollywood, the humans prevail at the end due to some type of uniquely human characteristics. The aliens can’t beat us because we have a soul or some type of greater capacity of sacrifice for humanity that they didn’t predict. It is more likely that they can predict it, don’t care and have watched every Hollywood movie we have made before they turn up. Humans believe they have something special about them and always rise to the occasion. In every war we have had, we advance technology and solve the immediate threat when we are focused as a society. We may put up a fight for the first wave but what about the next and the next. What if what the aliens have is more special, unique and merciless?
The smartest minds on the planet will switch from developing algorithms to control our minds to developing weapons to fight aliens but we will be too late if aliens turn up before we can travel through the galaxy. The technology required would mean everything about the aliens is far more advanced than us. They will have more streaming channels, self-driving cars, robots to clean the house and marry. They will have gone beyond killer drones and army robots, lasers and human-like AI sex dolls. Everything we are evolving into would have been surpassed. Would they have ethics and debates or have developed faster because they do not worry about those petty human things?
Aliens could come in any form. Their science and development could be outside our capacity to even imagine. They could be just bacteria that can fly through space until they hit earth by accident and kill everything on the planet for no good reason. They could be well-meaning intergalactic priests who bring a disease that kills us before we can figure it out. They could be an autocratic military conquering everything to feed the home planet resources. They could be carnivores that eat humans and farm us for meat. They could be one random crash-landed alien escaping their home planet or a war between alien races that is a compassionate benevolent life form that helps humans, but we don’t live in a comic book. Any super powerful being is more likely to act like and be treated like a god. This also means there are more of them. They could be a species forced to abandon their planet before it explodes and are just survivors looking for a new home. These guys would start out friendly, blend in or hide but remember it took a few flags and 132 Spanish to conquer 100,000+ Mexicans only 1,500 years ago. It took 10,000 British soldiers with flags, guns, nice uniforms and a modern military to conquer over 1 million Indians.
What would the world’s religions do when aliens arrived? Would they go, ‘Oh, my God created another species on another planet’ and welcome them with their shared beliefs? I am sure the priests would all turn out and bring their best funny hats and robes, but they would be competing from the start for who gets the front seat, ‘pick me, pick me’ mentality; to show they are the anointed ones. Earth has hundreds of religions that all think their god is the only god so I doubt another species would have the same god. If they had one the same as ours, that would be amazing and I would be really taken aback, for a moment, but then I would remember how the British used missionaries to move in and control parts of China and India in the 1800’s. Religions would try to adapt their stories but the aliens are likely to have their own established beliefs and be like, ‘We are more advanced than you, you’d better convert or die’. Even if they believe they are bringing compassion, when has a religion ever encouraged conversion peacefully when people disagree? Millions have died to spread compassionate religions. When have people given up their religion when a more sensible belief comes along, or something that smacks them in the face as unrealistic occurs. Logic will not be the religion’s answer to an alien race arriving. When has a religion ever accepted they might have it wrong and gone, ‘Oh well, made a mistake there!’ They adapt and twist to the circumstances to suit their agenda.
Consider how dangerous it is to reach out to a universe with radio signals, pictures and time capsules of earth to be found by aliens. They might not even know we are here, but get excited when we identify ourselves. In our excitement to make first contact, we may inadvertently contact an aggressive alien race. Maybe a benign alien civilization, less civilized or comparable to us, receives our messages. They then have intelligence about us, we do not have about them, to consider what it means as they develop. Neither option gives us an advantage, which is what you need to survive.
Does the theory of evolution apply to the universe and alien races? We’d better hope not. Maybe an advanced race would have, or has already has found us and is just looking to see what benefit we could be to them and when, learning and taking their time ,or developing what they need to come and say hi.
Aliens could have been to earth already, got bored with our lack of numbers, technology level, and left. Or maybe just missed home. Built a few pyramids, taught the humans about the concept of God, fixed their spaceships and left us to our own devices. Planning to come back when we are useful, have better technology, larger numbers or finished the path they put us on. We could just be a pawn in an intergalactic game, livestock or caretakers until they need the earth’s resources.
Aliens could have died out long ago and left some really cool archaeological site on another planet that we find when we can get there. We unlock it and it kills us because by having the technology to do that, means we are a threat, and the biological message it leaves us kills us. They could have been killed of by an even worse alien race, which comes to save us but then uses us as food, slaves or zoo exhibits. Leaving something for us to enhance our technology, cure cancer, have better AI and video games is not the most likely option.
If the universe has alien life, we could be the smartest ones out there or the only ones left. The Fermi paradox is the lack of evidence of aliens despite the high likelihood that aliens exist, based on the size of the universe. The Fermi paradox is when a society gets too smart for itself, kills itself off by way of nuclear war, biological fuck up or planetary demise caused by its own smartness. This is why we do not see other smart civilizations and what could be just around the corner for us if we do not smarten up or get smarter! Why do we always need faster washing machines and bigger TV’s? Isn’t there a point where life is as good as it gets or needs to be without evolving into algorithm-controlled AI run humans with nothing to do and no brain left to think for ourselves?
Humans could be just extremely random evolution combined from a massively remote collection of everything that makes us, us, and the earth, the earth, and capable of evolution in a universe so vast we do not know the end or start. That is less likely and exponentially improbable. There is one god and that one god created one planet and an empty universe for us to wonder about and look at. Religious texts provide no answers as they can’t even explain a round world with countries that did not know about when they were written (with little advice on aliens).
Humans will travel into the stars, but we are also likely to have to evolve further to do it. At our current rate, Homo sapiens might get replaced by evolution that we bring on ourselves by developing smarter AI, that then develops smarter humans and like all of history, replaces us with an advanced version. Like Homo sapiens did to the Neanderthals. Humans may get into space, but we might be genetically enhanced, cyborgs at best, but more likely an AI version of our current selves that can live longer, is stronger, faster and gets less depressed and moody.
Aliens could be outside our ability to understand or communicate with. They could be more like fungi, ants, reptilian, bacteria or AI robots that took over their planet from the dominant species of sentient hive-mind coconut trees. They could be lava-based heat resistant non oxygen needing 1ft tall multi limb vegans who eat their own waste for nutrients.
The chances of aliens being humanoid with two arms and two legs would be like winning the universe-wide multi galactic lotto three times in row. If they were, it is more likely they are responsible for life on earth through genetic enhancement thousands of years ago and just bread earth as a zoo or experiment. It would be nice to think that multiple planets’ evolution and development are all going to be in line with ours, perhaps at different times but essentially the same. Meaning that evolution is more like a likely and logical process that planets like ours, a certain distance from a sun, with a certain atmosphere, will all develop the same life forms, biology and species. That it is happening all over the galaxy at different rates. We are just so far away that we cannot yet play rugby against them.
It could also be that space travel is just impossible unless we evolve into a species that can live longer, live in space, breath different atmosphere, get nutrients from radiation and develop a hive-mind that allows us to endure the galaxies demands of travel. Or we could just be one invention away from folding space and travelling through worm holes or star gates at light speed as safe as we walk to the shops.
Can humans co-exist with any species? Do you have a good relationship with all your neighbours? The world is more united now than ever, but is always on the verge of catastrophe. We have nuclear weapons, rogue states, multiple religions who disagree on whose god is the only god and so many people we cannot predict the future accurately. We have endured multiple world wars, massive social experiments in communism, socialism, fascism, liberalism and autocraticism, we are ismed out, but we persist. However, we do not get along, have the same beliefs or the same reasons for living.
Maybe aliens would bring us together as a common enemy or friend, but it is more likely some humans would team up with the new kid and have a different gang to help them be the tougher kids on the block. If we had peaceful coexisting aliens that are slightly less capable as us, humans would exploit them as gardeners, domestic help or sex slaves. If they were dominant, we would be cooking their food and mowing their lawns. Many humans will do whatever they can to be dominant and share their alien ways in the belief they are righteous, so we are likely have humans that side with aliens, ones that rebel against them, while most just get wiped out. One day there would be unions, alien rights and protests but aliens would more likely put us in concentration camps than give us democratic rights.
The aliens could be there but unable to travel like us. We can communicate by radio waves like CB radio friends. We will get a distorted view from who we talk to and who represents us will shape their perception. The aliens could already be here, and your CB radio pal is an alien already. Aliens could do reconnaissance, blending in, doing anal probes and waiting for the fleet to arrive. They could also be escapees, hiding from another alien race that wiped them out or just refugees that no one wants. The escapees could be what attracts a worse alien or just bounty hunters with nuclear laser pistols.
We better hope we can evolve to deal with an unknown, unpredictable threat at an unpredictable time and that AI develops us to be ready, smarter and evolved. Maybe AI and social media are aliens, and they are already taking over, controlling our minds, alienating our young from the real world and developing algorithms to make individual thinking extinct? In that case, Zuckerberg and Musk are probably aliens! Maybe the clouds are spaceships in disguise watching us already and planning, or we could just be an entire Truman Show for an alien streaming service.
Our best chance is to be the dominant species, travel the universe and colonize whatever we find first. Do not mess with developing species if they do not have space travel but look for resources that will help us. These two things will always conflict as space anthropologists will always lose to big corporations. The Greens Party is unlikely to be on the forefront of space travel so it will be found and exploited by big business.
Of course, we could all just be a simulation in some teenager’s VR game from 2054 and aliens will be whatever the AI game or virtual reality life choice designers will sell more games.
Please email me your ideas!
Anthony Manning
