---We like being special here on earth. We act like we feel small when we think of the vastness of the universe, but I think we feel big and important believing that we're "it" as far as intelligent life. I think it would really depress us and shatter thousands of years of human hubris to know that there is lots of superior intelligent life in the universe. Perhaps that's why we're prone to think of aliens with fear, and why alien movies are usually alien invasion movies. Either we can't stand the idea of intelligent life more powerful than we are, or we are so impressed with our culture and our achievements that it is threatening to think of a race of non-human creatures who may have developed similar things, perhaps greater things. What would it do to our theology!? What if we are not even close to God on the Great Chain of Being -- maybe we're more in the middle of the hierarchy. You know how we condescend to animals? They are our pets. We train them and treat them, at best, like children. And there are no animals we respect in the same way we respect our own kind. Well, suppose there are races of vastly superior beings out there -- not just in the way of technological and civil development -- no I mean that they themselves have greater capacities for all the skills we pride ourselves on, e.g. physical strength and endurance, thinking and reasoning, use and range of emotion, beings who simply have more potential. Would we not just be "animals" to them? How then do you suppose people would relate to God?
Of course, it may turn out that we ARE "it." But that's a hell of a lot of space out there. If we happened, why couldn't there be others?
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This reminds me of a (rather long) quote from an amazing book:
"'It's almost as if you're purposely refusing to understand" he groaned. "I've been talking about Solaris the whole time, solely about Solaris. If the truth is hard to swallow, it's not my fault. Anyhow, after what you've already been through, you ought to be able to hear me out! We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need for other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us--the part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence--then we don't like it anymore.'
I had listened to him patiently.
'But what on earth are you talking about?'"
-Stanislaw Lem, Solaris, 1961, p.72
-Cameron M.
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