Are we alone?
The answer to this much pondered question should be obvious...No, of course we are not. From every thing I've read, I find that it is impossible for Earth to be the only planet in the entire universe that can sustain life...The only way this would be possible in my eyes is if there is a divine being, but really, how likely is that? hehe ;)
*it's actually a really funny thing, I had a discussion with a friend who I know to be very religious about aliens, and she said to me "I'll believe it when I see them" I couldn't help ponder her beliefs in her god here"
Sometimes we just need to have faith, I Believe there must be some other life out there, whether it is cultured, intelligent or even capable of movement is not as guaranteed in my mind. Given the vast quantities of the universe, It's highly unlikely we'll ever actually run into other life though, but just imagine...
Imagine what our first contact will be like...What will mankind learn? Will we learn of ancient civilizations that destroyed themselves from within, foreshadowing our own imminent destruction? Or will we learn new methods of space travel, will our laws of physics be flipped upside down? Will Einstein be proved 100% off mark?
Or will we simply stare through a microscope, at a tiny life form...A tiny reminder of how small we really, truly are. A tiny reminder of how life will find a way, always?
Let's imagine our first contact is initiated by an intelligent alien race that arrives on Earth, a race that may or may not wish to take our planet for themselves
What will mankind learn from this race?
The biggest question I have here, is will mankind stand united, or fall divided?
Upon seeing another intelligent life form that is so different from us, will we all realize just how similar we are to each other? Will we realize that these trivialities that separate us now, such as skin colour, gender or race really have no more meaning than the blank page that we often find at the end of a book?
Will mankind learn to stand united, to help each other, to look after others of it's own race, to accept all human beings as the same and one, to accept that this is our race, this is our heritage, our inheritance and everything that we are, it is everything that we have?
Or will mankind divide and break apart? Will there be political disagreements on how to treat the aliens? Will we wage war with ourselves to obtain these new technologies? Will we struggle against each other for an ally in a sentient being? Will those of us with power kidnap the outsiders to study and experiment, despite many protesting against it?
Will mankind destroy itself from within? Will we, in our individual, selfish greed, and our collective thrust for knowledge destroy the very bonds that separate us from more primitive forms of life?
I often think about what our first contact will be like, sadly it will probably not occur in my life time, it may never occur at all. If it does occur, it may just be us stumbling upon some microscopic or primitive organisms, not that that alone wouldn't be beyond exciting.
But I feel like mankind's ultimate test, the test that will prove our mettle as a race will be the one where we meet our equals, or the one where we meet those that are superior, that are beyond us. What will humanity resort to? What means will we go to not only survive, but to thrive?
But more importantly, how will we change as a race? Will this be the end of all of the many problems that we have placed on ourselves? Will we finally act on our current realization that we are destroying our beautiful planet? Will we see that we are disgracing members of our own race, that all we ever really seem to think about is ourself, as an individual, and not often about our race as a collected unit?
I think the most important thing we could learn from contact is that humanity is small. I know that to us it may often seem like we dominate this planet, where everything seems to be ours because we are capable of intelligent thought. This makes us not think so much about humanity as a whole...We think about "those people" or "the Arabs" or "the Chinese" We think about ourselves and the people we as an individual know...
But we never really think about HUMANITY about HUMAN BEINGS as a RACE. If we met other races of equal or higher intelligence, or equal or higher culture...we would see...we would see that humanity is just one small puzzle piece, that there is a bigger picture...that to survive, we need to learn to love all other human beings because we are all one and the same.
