Re:UFO’s
Actually that didn’t come off too well, not the way I meant it anyway 😯
I’m more thinking of Julian Jaynes work, about how our bicameral minds may make us more of a mutation than any natural progression of intelligence in the Universe. And he provides very hard to defeat evidence from Gilgamesh, Homer and other early poets which clearly dictate an evolution in thinking from “You MUST obey the Gods!” to “Well, we can think for ourselves!”. Humans existed for possibly up to or over a million years before we created Sumer, and Ur, Uruk, Nippur and the rest of the bunch. So what changed so drastically in the last 7000 years? Anyways I’m getting into the books and essays now so…
More to the point, I’m just *very* personally intrigued by the option that we might be a very unique form of life in the way we think and shape reality. Certainly somewhere out there in the vastness of the Universe another race like ours exists. Possibly even the exact same evolutionary path. Religions aside, it’s very ignorant to think otherwise, unless we’re missing something so fundamental that there really isn’t a Universe filled with millions of Galaxies out there each containing hundreds of thousands of star systems which most have planetary bodies orbiting them. Out of those trillions of possibilities how can there not be?
However we have a planet filled with life, yet we can barely understand any of it. We cannot even trace our own origins back sufficiently enough to understand our own evolution. Do we gauge the intelligence of a creatures ability to build empires and languages? Or do we set aside all other lifeforms for the ones we consider most compatible with us, hence our word “Sentient”. Who’s the winner? The Dolphins who live full and healthy lives, or the humans who spend it warring? We still argue over the fact whether or not Dolphins have language.
I truly would not be surprised to find the Universe littered with life far beyond our comprehension and vice-versa. Even on Earth we have creatures who communicate by pheremones and receptors.
To use a Sci-Fi quote “If an ant were to ask another ant, “what was that?!?”, How could it answer?” Two of my other favorite fictions “Star Control” and “Enders Game” deal with the problem of true Xenophobia and incompatibility. I loved the way the Insect at the end claims that God must exist, because who else could play a joke so cruel that two species who have so much in common be so different in their way of perceiving the Universe. To them killing us was just a way of shaking hands, when two hives meet. Whereas we could not possibly see ourselves as anything less than individuals. And this is just the stuff our simple minds can even think of. Imagine what’s really out there.
Anyways, these are just my random rambling thoughts on the issue. I’d love a cliche Universe like Star Trek where you can go around meeting new races, but our evolution does not seem to fit the natural order of things, and we might very well find ourselves in a ‘Sea of Animals’ who are far more content to live simply than extend their will upon the Universe.
Hopefully we will find out in my lifetime =) But that would pretty much require some alien race to come here and give us that technology