“Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.”
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
This exchange between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in the movie “Men In Black” is exactly why people aren’t ready for UFO contact yet. Or at least we aren’t ready for a UFO to merely show up in the sky and say hello, and have us just wave back as if we were having a new visitor over for dinner.
Human beings are very stubborn creatures. While being contacted by an alien civilization would be a landmark occurrence in human history, most of us wouldn’t know how to handle it. Our entire perception of the Universe would be altered, and all the things that we grew up believing we would have to reconsider.
The most important change would be how we view religion. One of the biggest tenets in the christian bible is that God made us in his image and us only. Humanity is supposed to be a one-of-a-kind special entity in the universe, that was created for us to enjoy by ourselves. What are we supposed to believe now if aliens came and revealed themselves too us?
Most Hollywood movies portray aliens as an evil force that wishes to invade and enslave us. Movies such as “Independence Day”, “Kill all Humans” etc. portray the this stereotype, in which a certain human rises up and becomes a hero against the evil aliens.
Would this be our reaction if aliens ever made contact? Would we be so warped by our understanding of supposed alien intentions that we would instinctively grab our guns and start shooting? We could end up starting a galactic fight with a civilization that might be just advanced enough to come find us, not harm us.
As a civilization, we cant even get along with each other. While God says we should love our brothers, even He realizes this won’t always happen, but come one, we don’t even try most of the time. Usually we act as a selfish species, with our own survival the only motivation for doing things. Could we negotiate or treat with respect an outside civilization, even if we did learn to trust them?
At this point in history, alien contact is just not a good idea, and chances are if aliens are out there, I’m sure they are smart enough to know this too.
