A Close Encounter of the Fifth Kind, in which extra-terrestrials begin a two-way communication with us is improbable in the extreme and very likely to result in disasters that would dwarf what we have been able to achieve thus far on our own. Are we ready for such contact? Of course not. No one is ever prepared for change; we prove that in our experience on the smallest scale to the very largest.
First, there are very few obvious reasons for extra-terrestrials to wish to visit us. Since an Extra-terrestrial traveling to earth must possess a technology or understanding of physics far beyond ours. And the energy expenditure to make such journeys from the far reaches of the galazy are, to our minds, prohibitive. So, what are those possible reasons?
The first possibility is the Mars Attacks scenario. One very real possibility for alien intervention in our world is that they are not very different from us. They have rapaciously used up their homeworld’s resources and need to replenish them. Or perhaps they like the idea of slavery. They may even regard us as cute pets. Now this goes against the idea that an advanced society would also have advanced ethical considerations. That’s poppycock, as we can see from human behavior. We are certainly not prepared for an invasion from another system. We have enough trouble coordinating the various military forces of a single nation. Think of the serious difficulties in coordination we saw in WWII or the Gulf Wars. An interstellar invasion would be a brutal butt-whoopin’ for us.
Another possibility is the When World’s Collide scenario. Perhaps the aliens wish to teach us from their vast superior wisdom. If the aliens are truly more advanced than we are, or more ethically evolved, as it were, the we are certain to botch it up. We, as a species, always choose our leaders because of their aggressive and assertive qualities. I shudder to think what might occur if Hugo Chavez was the first human leader to talk to aliens. Or Putin? How about the Chinese upper echelon? Humans are terribly unenlightened when it comes to communication, too. We begin wars based on misunderstandings between established human languages and cultures. Do you really think we’re gong to be able to handle the complexities of communication between peoples of different stars?
How about the Close Encounters of a Fifth Kind scenario? What if the aliens are ethically superior, but ultimately curious. Perhaps they would carefully guide us in our communications. Could we handle that kind of contact? Well, first of all, what kind of relationship would it be. We would be, as Arthur Clarke posited Star Children, the infants in a galactic community. I would suggest that our ego- and geo- centric personalities would force us to either evolve suddenly (unlikely), retreat into a self-imposed solitude in our generally isolationist attitude (very likely), or go out in a blaze of nuclear suicide as we lauch everything we have against our neighbors in a fit of paranoid pique (most likely).
Another possibility is the Ex-Files scenario. The aliens don’t care about who we are, what we believe or what we do. they experiment on us the way we experiment on viruses and amoeba. Since they are alien, what makes us believe that they would have a recognizable conscience or ethical system? If they were truly alien, they may not even ever recognize us as sentient. How would we handle that kind of dismissive treatment? Well, I think we would likely handle that kind of contact the way the ufo conspiracy people think that we are handling it right now. We would deny their existence publicly, regardless of what evidence we had. We would ridicule believers, subvert the experts who attempt to inform the population and finally use assassination and cover-ups to hide the truth that is out there.
Now, this all may seem very cynical, and it is. But consider how the United States treat illegal aliens, and they look just like us! Consider how people half way around the world from the United States are so locked in a primitive religion-fueled insecurity that they feel they must destroy anything that their paranoid imaginations lead them to believe is a slight or insult. Half the people on Earth believe that we should cease industrial progress and economic growth in order to heal a climate crisis for which the evidence is still dubious, while the other half are willing to gamble the future of the earth away on the hope that all this global climate crisis stuff will just go away. People are people, and we will never be ready for contact with extra-terrestrials for the simple reason that we are never prepared for change.
