W-wa Jeziorki: Are Aliens intrinsically good or bad?

Let's start with the basic, undeniable, fact that our Universe consists of around 200 billion galaxies, each with between hundreds of millions and a hundred trillion stars. The famous Drake equation attempts to work out how many of those stars might host advanced civilisations. The current best-guess is that within our galaxy alone, there are 15,600,000 such civilisations. This number could be out by a factor of a hundred, so it could be as few as 156,000 or as many as 1,560,000,000.

The Universe should be teeming with life, assuming that the Laws of Nature are indeed Universal. Many species of sentient life could have evolved within our own galactic neighbourhood. If so - why have they not contacted us?

I'd argue that they know us very well, but are wise enough not to trouble us. As a species, we couldn't cope with contact with advanced alien civilisations.

Their wisdom comes from having removed hatred, anger, and propensity to do evil, from their gene pool - either by natural selection, or (more probably) by genetic engineering. They will have got over their species' adolescence - wars and diseases have been eliminated. Yet along the eternal way from Zero to One, many alien civilisations have disappeared, having unleashed upon themselves nuclear wars, runaway climate change or other - as yet unknown to us - catastrophes.

The ones that have endured have done so by being good - the ultimate purpose of the Universe - all-good, all-aware. Focused on advancing their knowledge, it is highly likely that they know about us down here on Planet Earth, but have striven to ensure that we do not know about them - not until the time is right, not until we have improved significantly. We are as unruly children, smashing windows in our own house, micturating on our rugs; they are as wise - and possibly immortal - elders. And peaceful.

Wars require anger and hatred to get started and to keep going. People have to hate or fear their perceived enemy enough to accept the risks that war brings. Wars thin out the population - in particular males of mating age - but they also spur on technological advance. Consider these two bomber aircraft below - their first flights were just 17 years apart (1930 and 1947), less than the time that's passed between Concorde's last ever flight and now. Consider too, that very little has changed in the aerodynamic look of the Boeing Stratojet and the shape of airliners in production today, 73 years on.

Handley Page Heyford Boeing B-47 Stratojet

Spin-offs from war included improvements in mass production, new technologies and processes which quickly found their way into consumers' lives. And space flight - now routine, the basis for technologies such as GPS and weather mapping - is a spin-off from Nazi Germany's V2 ballistic missile programme.

Advancements in science and technology do not occur predictably or at an even pace. Ask anyone around in 1955 what the future will look like, and they would have said nuclear-powered spaceliners that can fly from London to Sydney in two hours. Or giant hovercraft crossing land and sea. Or people commuting to work in small helijets. Hardly anyone would have said a computer in every house linked into a gigantic network providing communication, information and entertainment.

Today, we'd all say that IT will continue to develop, in the direction of artificial intelligence, while healthcare, driven by new discoveries and techniques will made enormous progress in fighting diseases - and indeed ageing.

But let's go forward a thousand years, as distant as Europe's Dark Ages are to today. Let's go forward a million years, a period more than three times longer than Homo sapiens has been around. A tiny fraction of the time since multicellular life forms began to appear on Earth. The leaps in knowledge, in technology, cannot be imagined. But the scope is there - a galaxy to be explored; the secrets of the Universe, the purpose of life. It is our destiny.

If I agree with the Catholic Church on the doctrine of Original Sin, it is in that we are all born with the capacity to anger, to do contemptible things; violence is a natural tendency. Until this has been worked out of the human gene pool, we shall not be able to reach to the stars. In general, over the centuries we are getting better, less cruel, understanding that win-win is preferable to adversarial relations in which one side emerges victorious, the other side the loser. But that Original Sin is still there within us. We do not know how to respond to the presence of evil dictators and murderous despots, other than all-out war. If they do not threaten us directly, it becomes convenient to let them continue. Misjudged attempts at toppling them (Iraq, Libya) show how difficult this problem is.

Advanced alien civilisations will have overcome this problem.

We think they will come in space ships? Did we reach the moon in dugout canoes? Distance may have been overcome by the use of quantum entanglement, or some other process of physics of which we have currently no idea.

They will come in peace - but only when we are at peace.

"One-eyed men aren't really reigning
They just march in place until
Two-eyed men with mystery training
Finally feel the power fill

Three-eyed men are not complaining.
They can yo-yo where they will
They slip inside this house as they pass by.

Don't pass it by."

- Slip Inside This House by the 13th Floor Elevators

This time last year:
Thoughts - trains set in motion

This time three years ago:
Great crested grebes and swans hatch