It’s been a while but it’s time for a rant. I’ve been thinking recently about the types of films and series that I like. They tend to feature space travel but ultimately end up being human stories. Science Fiction is just reality set off Earth. All the emotions and activities don’t really change. So, I want to posit a plot to you:
Aliens / discovered Earth creatures seem intent on destroying/enslaving/correcting humans/Earth. They justify this because they observe the terrible way humans treat each other with war and selfishness. But right at the last moment Earth is saved because humans have “love” or some other emotion or device that humans secretly produced and used because they are clever.
I have decided this is most likely an incorrect conclusion to all those stories. Humans are terrible creatures and I think the net morality of humankind is waaay over the side of the bad. Look at what we do:
- We produce enough food to feed the world, but we don’t distribute it fairly.
- We could solve disease problems across the world but we don’t.
- We are very clearly destroying the climate of our planet, have known about it for years, but have done nothing.
- We have individuals who are richer than the poorest countries.
- We still have wars even though we recognised that there was a “war to end all wars”.
- We look the other way from people trying to seek a better life and leave them to drown in the oceans.
- We cause pain and suffering to children through adult-led organisations and yet allow them to shelter abusers – All churches and many youth organisations.
I don’t think that the feeling of love we can have for each other outweighs these things we do. I don’t think the central pillar of humanity is love. The central pillar of humanity is selfishness and power hunger. I’m not saying all people feel like that but I’m arguing the case that when observed from afar humanity is a pretty shit species. I don’t think the net result of humans being in the universe is anywhere near positive. I suspect the universe would collectively sigh with relief if an alien species decided we should be disappeared [now I’m thinking about the morality of destroying objects/things that have net negative contributions to the universe].
Maybe this is why we haven’t heard from aliens yet. They’ve seen what we’ve done and decided to shut us off from the universal trade system. We have been blackballed.