To signal or not to signal, that is the question

Many believe there is life on other planets and some believe that aliens could already be living among us. Scientists now believe that they may have located a sector of the universe where a civilisation lives and wonder if contact should be made.

There are arguments for and against this. Some argue that it should be because, if they are an advanced civilisation, perhaps humans could learn something from them. Others argue that on no account should contact be made unless we know who they are, what they’re like, how they live and how they survive; are they hostile, for example.

This desire to find life on other planets and the dream of finding it reminds me of so many movies. For example ‘Contact’ where the civilisation was advanced and friendly. So friendly that they even sent humans a blueprint to build a machine to visit them. Another was the cult movie ET with an innocent extra-terrestrial. This might be the reason many argue for the idea of making contact. But then there are countless movies in which the aliens are not friendly at all. Case in point are ‘War of the Worlds’, ‘Signs’ ‘Bird Box’, ‘Aliens’ and ‘Battle Los Angeles’, and the list could do on. In these movies we humans had moved down a notch on the food chain.

I am reminded of Neil deGrasse Tyson who once said that this desire to make contact with aliens is a romantic notion and in reality it could be highly dangerous for us. Imagine a worm in a garden and it sees a large being trudge by (a human). The worm might think how fantastic that being must be. The human, on the other hand, doesn’t even notice this worm. It’s a worm, small, slimy, no intellect and great for turning over the soil. To another civilisation that is more advanced than humans, it has to be more advanced to be able to develop the technology to travel billions of light years to get to Earth, humans are that worm. We speak but they can’t understand us. We’re worms, maybe suitable for food or work. What if the civilisation with whom they wish to make contact is hostile? Many movies portray aliens as predators whose only aim is to look for other sources of food (humans) or sources of energy.

But if they are on the same intellectual level as we are then will they be interested in humans given the state of our planet and the way we behave? From what movies show, life on other planets is not divided into countries. There are no borders or nationalities. They all belong to the same planet and are, therefore, for example, Asgardians or Vulcans. On earth, we are not Earthlings, a term coined by shows like ‘3rd Rock from the Sun’. We are Emiratis, American, British, Pakistani, Filipino or Indian.

If an alien were to fly by it would see killing, borders around masses of land, fighting and folk with their heads in crooks hooked on a small screen in their hands. A civilisation from another world would think we have no intellect, that we are primitive and that we are dumb, the equivalent of a worm that we might come across in our gardens.

In fact, there’ve been so many sightings of UFOs in the skies across the world, maybe they were visitors who saw what was happening on the planet and decided to give us a miss. They see all the violence on earth, people starving and few in high places trying to help them but making it worse for them, maybe to the aliens we are the hostile ones. They might assume that the minute they land and make contact, we humans will be ready with our weapons pointed at them even before waiting to find out if they come in peace and with friendship in mind.

Actually I don’t know whether or not life exists on other planets. But I do doubt the UFO sightings. Sometimes there’s a logical explanation for it, such as aircraft training exercises, and sometimes there are unseen forces trying to trick us into believing that aliens exist.