If they haven’t already.
When the Great Filter discussions and thought experiments are made, they never factor much about human psychological aspects. The most you get is a vague “intelligent life itself is the filter”. Meaning that life is so competitive we are self destructive.
So what if we were visited by aliens? A rich source of fiction surrounds the diametrically opposed views of:
1). Kill us/enslave us to take our resources.
2). They are also awestruck that intelligent life outside their own exists and wouldn’t it be fun to cooperate and be friends?
#2 is clearly out of the question. The conspiracy theorist operates in a world of actively keeping the planet in a constant state of turmoil, whether they actually realize it or not. The rich and powerful don’t give a shit about anything but maintaining being rich and powerful. Bored out of their minds that being born into a life of privilege and having the quest for resources bypassed, they seek the one thing that the money can’t directly buy.
Attention. And since the conspiracists operate by making their grift a cult - promotion of bad ideas is rewarded, promotion of anything resembling empathy is attacked, the rich and powerful have a ready source of pseudo-slave labor. Fanboys love to pick shitty role models who will do anything for attention. Start a pointless war on a whim. Buy a social media site for the lulz. Suggest that surgery to make your booty more luscious is what all females must strive for, etc….
Flying a fleet of warships across huge distances to steal our chemicals?!? Nonsense. There a going to be more space rocks a lot closer to get minerals from. If the aliens are that far advanced they’d more likely have a method of turning less useful stuff into more useful stuff we currently can’t comprehend. If they don’t have super duper faster than light travel, we might have figured out how, oh hell, I don’t know, make bombs out of carbon ashes in a few million years. Because that’s the kind of things our governments do. Hey, scientist that made a way to clean up swamp water into potable drinking water. That’s all well and good. Somebody is going to make money off this. I’d like to be in on that first stock issue. But in the meantime, how the fuck do I kill somebody with clean drinking water? And somebody will find a way because they will get attention. It’s what we do.
As for slave labor, humans make shitty slaves. Strangely, those enslaved do not enjoy being enslaved. There is a distinct lack of cooperation in the human species. Every civilization has had problems with getting too big for its britches and imploding. There’s always too many people that don’t want to cooperate, stirring up trouble, looking for attention. It’s vastly more difficult to get attention while being enslaved. Or so I’ve been told. No, the way to go is to be the enslaver, not the enslaved.
So what exactly does this mean to our tiny little piece of rock that probably has a bit more going for it in the raw materials being turned into useful stuff? The Great Filter is cooperation. Only by finding a common ground can life peacefully coexist with itself. An advanced civilization out there among the stars must have figured that out. Therefore, upon finding us they have two basic options.
1). Ignore us as being to trivial to waste their time on us.
2). And this is where it gets scary. Monitor us to see if we become a threat. “Hey Florg, they have nuclear weapons!!” “Hey, Skizinx, don’t be a dumbass. Do they have hyperdemocracy yet? Of course not. Get back to me when you’ve got real news!!”
And then one day we create hyperdemocracy, having overcome our near self destruction by the Great Clean Drinking Water Wars. “HEY FLORG!!!! Who’s the dumbass ass now?! They have hyperdemocracy now!!” “Alright, calm down. Skizo, what about super duper quantumdemocracy?”
“Not yet. But they finally stopped electing total douchebags as political leaders.”
“Oh holy mother fucking black hole singularity SHIT!!!”
And then they realize the time has come. Having already figured long ago wasting resources on a fleet of starships was not on option. Just to make sure we don’t revert to our warlike stupidity and can remain aloof in their quantumdemocracy life of utopian leisure and not being enslaved, they hold their most important Grandificent Council Meeting. Where it’s decided to nudge the Earth backwards with their faster than light massless ray weapons.
“Those that nearly kill each other with clean drinking water are a threat we cannot take a chance on. We must disrupt them, return them to their confirmation bias attention whore ways.”
“TURN ON THE GEMATRIA BEAM!!”
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