Where are the aliens? Where are other intelligent species in the universe? This is one of our biggest unanswered questions since when we ...
Where are the aliens? Where are other intelligent species in the universe? This is one of our biggest unanswered questions since when we have recognized, there are maybe others.
Our universe is a vast place, filled with galaxies. The galaxies are filled with a huge number of stars, and many of them have planets with a chance to be in the star's habitable zone.
The circumstances are right for us that we are not to be alone in the universe. Even if we only consider our galaxy, because other galaxies are too far to travel and visit, we have a significant chance that we are not alone. There is even a formula, the Drake equation, with lots of uncertain factors, to calculate probabilities, how many other intelligent lifeforms could exist next to us. The calculation is pretty wild because of the uncertainties, and provide a vast range of results from well below one, all the way to many millions intelligent lifeforms, just inside in our galaxy. However, as our knowledge grows, the likelihood, the number of the possible civilizations is growing too.
Let's suppose, we are not alone, and the reality favors intelligence. It is possible, and our growing knowledge supports this assumption too. At least, the places where life can develop are most likely, abundant. The other parts of the requirements, the possibilities of the formation of able-to-contact civilizations are still blurry, but at least our example shows, it has the chance.
We can assume, why not, there are others. Where are they then? Why they do not contact us if we are on the level that we can be contacted, or at least we think, we are.
Maybe they are in a different development phase, they could be behind us. However, if they exist, it would be strange to suppose, we are the most developed, we are the leaders of all the existing civilizations in the galaxy. Even if it is not impossible, this would place us in a special place. If we just thinking about likelihoods, it would be a better assumption if we put ourselves somewhere between the oldest and the youngest civilizations, still if they exist.
So, what if we are not the most developed civilization? What if there are other, more advanced, older civilizations? If it is true, they probably way ahead of us in technical development. Why? Because our example shows, technical progress is a self-catalytic process in a big enough, open-minded civilization. The technological development accelerates.
If this statement is generally true, a galactically insignificant time difference can result in a significant difference in the technology level. Discoverers of America could be acted like gods to the native people. Just a little older alien technical civilization could act as God to us. What if the other civilization is a million years older? A million-year is not a long time in the evolution of life.
Where would we be in a million years from now? If we, our intelligence still exist then, even if not in the form of the human, but in a form, which is rooted in the human race, where would we be? If our technical civilization and our knowledge and development could uninterruptedly continue for another million years, we probably could turn ourselves from the Earth-based civilization to a galactic-based civilization. We already started to. We are sending probes to other planets and even outside of the solar system. In a million years from now, we would have visited much of our galaxy.
Another, one million years older technology-based civilization would do the same. They would know, the Earth is an interesting place, which worth keeping the eyes on it. Life is not a secret. Life is a dynamic process, life can transform a planet surface, which is noticeable from very far. This is what we are started to do, trying to recognize the life caused changes on other planets, and not just in our solar system but other solar systems too. We do not know the life generally, we only know our kind of life, but we know, where life develops, it changes its environment significantly. And these changes are recognizable from very far. This is why we hope that we may discover life in other planets, even by looking through telescopes.
Life started on our Earth at least three billion years ago. We call that early life, the single cell-based life primitive, but this life converted the Earth's surface and atmosphere significantly. Our life-bearing planet shows signs of life for at least back to three billion years.
Three billion years even cosmically significant time. If intelligent, technology-oriented life, other than ours, can develop in our galaxy, such life could be developed millions of years ago. Million is small compared to billion. Such a civilization could, and because a technical civilization must be curious, too, want and would discover its galaxy. And would notice, maybe with next to many others, there is a planet, where interesting processes are taking place. Where life maybe exists. Most likely, they had already discovered Earth.
Inevitably, our tendency predicts it that we are going to do the same things, also. We would perceive earthlike planets where life maybe exists if we could continue our development for another million years.
And after the perception, we, or they, would not lose attention. Life is precious in the universe. Worth to protect it in a way without disturbing it. Intelligence dictates not to conquer, not to rule but protect and observe. This may have happened to us before, and it may be happening with us right now. If they exist, if they discovered Earth, maybe long before the human race developed, they would keep attention on this planet. We would do the same in a similar situation.
Time is not a challenge for a galactic civilization. They could continue the research and observation for a long time. If a million year older technology-based intelligence exists, they are here.
Where are they then? Earth not just has life, Earth has intelligent life, the Earth has us, humans. We are intelligent and self-aware in the context of we are open-minded, curious, explorers, problem solvers, and builders. We are the crown of the life on the Earth. And we are communicative too, we possess language, and we want to use it, we want to communicate, and not just between each other, not just between humans. We are searching for alien lives, and that makes us even more visible and evident to other intelligence.
Where are they, if they are here? And if they are here, most likely they are here long ago. Maybe they are here before the human race started to form. They could follow our development. If they are here, they know everything about us, our history, our language, our biology, our nature, our society, and civilization. They know our level of development. They would know, we reached the level of the connection. They could communicate with us. We are ready for that. Where are they?
If they are watching us from long ago, no communication barrier would exist between us. They could communicate with us in our language. Either in spoken language or in the language of science. And maybe they already did, we just did not recognize it, as the alien contact. We may only recognize it, as the signs of gods. If they communicated with us as if they were gods, that was a misleading act. They are not gods in an absolute way, as a creator of everything. They can act like gods, in a relative way, as they have more knowledge. But now, we could understand them.
The connection may have occurred between us before. Why not happening now? Now we could understand what they want to say to us, we are ready for the connection. Or maybe not. We may not be prepared. Not because of our level of understanding, but because of our society.
It must be a fundamental rule: if a society is contacted by another higher-level civilization, the contact should not harm the contacted society. However, if they would contact us now, it could hurt or even destroy our society.
Why and how, if they are friendly? They surely know a lot about us before they would contact us. That must be a basic rule. Do not contact if it could be harmful to the contacted. And admittedly, it would be harmful to us. They must know that. Why? Not because of them, but because of us.
Our civilization is a divided civilization. Separated by country borders, divided by the availability and eventuality, and many other ways too. We rather are competing instead of cooperating with each other. We may help others, but mostly to our benefits, primarily for selfish reasons. We still bear our ancestry, which is rooted in where the competition was the way to acquire better abilities. To survive. Evolution built on diversity and competition to find the best to survive. Evolution built on the difference. Those who have better abilities survive, and those who have not, will extinct. Today we are living under the same rules, even if not biologically, but at the society level.
Competition is fierce, and it is everywhere in our society. Those, who are ahead in this competition, who has more resource, more power, getting even more. Those, who are not, left behind. They do not become extinct. Not because, as often said, care by the richer, but because winners need them to create more wealth by forcing them with power, what they already have. We are living in a competing, divided evolution-like society.
Evolution works well in the biology-based systems, but the evolution creates an ever-growing division in a society-based system, because a civilized society may not allow extinction. Our only option to overcome division is the aspiration to equality. We know this. We recognized the drawbacks of the rules of evolution, and we fight against it. Our society, human society tries to overcome the limits of evolution. We are trying to build a better, which means a more equal society. And maybe we will.
Until we do not succeed, we have a competition-based society, where those, who have, have more, and those, who have more access to the resources, material, money, information, getting even more. It is our problem. We have to live with it, we have to deal with it, and we have to solve it sometime.
Why is it so important from that point of view, that we get contacted with other intelligent life? Because the contact creates an ultimate resource for the contacted. The connection provides a vast amount of information and knowledge, which was not available before. If the contact established with a division based society, it will create even more division and tension in the receiving society.
The aliens must know it. They know it because they most likely have evolution based origin, and they already went through on the steps to get rid of the competition in their society. Or they just know it by experiencing those-kinds-of other societies. They surely know, if they would reveal themselves to an able-to-understand but competition-based society, it could create a devastating effect, which could destroy society. The contact must be made carefully, the time when the receiving society can handle it.
We are not at this stage. We may understand them, but we could not handle the given knowledge for the benefit of the whole society. Our evolution-based ancestry still prevents that.
An interesting aspect that many religions deny evolution. However, evolution is a scientific fact. If religion is not just a product of our thinking, but it has a human-independent origin, that origin must have known about the evolution. Why is then the strong denial against the evolution in the gods' based ideological systems? If religion is not just our intellectual products, then it may be teaching from a more advanced intelligence, how the society should behave and function to reach the level to be contactable. It is true that not all religions deny the competition or fight, but it could be an externally added value to that ideology, most likely by the human, if that religion really has God's origin. The main thing is that religions, as Christianity is, advises a competition-less, cooperative, even altruistic society, which is entirely foreign from our nature, from our biological ancestry, from our evolution. However, it could be an advise, teaching for us toward the steps to become a galactic civilization.
Where are we now? We are close to being contacted, and we are far from it too. We are close to it, because we are able to understand the requirements, and we are far from it because we have no real intention to take the necessary steps. However, the importance of these steps is not just to be a contacted civilization, but to survive the human race too. We have to abandon our evolutionary origin, and we have to create, build, and maintain a fundamentally cooperative, and not just interest-based cooperative, and in this way, contactable society. That may our fate to accomplish it for our survival, to have future, and to become one of the galactic societies. Can we make it?
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