We don't have very substantial direct information as to what such ET-visitors would be (or are) like, despite what my friends in "abductions research" would have us believe---I suppose that I'll have to write something about that sometime, though I don't relish it. This is the last of this series of posts on possible natures of ET, and is by far the most "distant" from science---but since I've already put much of the earlier things into publication here and there, in a way this is why I wrote those others as a lead-in anyway. Those previous posts are all similar in content and attitude to the mainline convergent biological and SETI-type literatures, and I believe you can view them as at least responsible commentaries and not quackery. This one may be less defensible, but what the H___, it's a blog. I am going to try to guess about some important things about highly advanced civilizations. Take them for what they're worth to you. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Any such civilization, if it's still going, must have somehow found ways to be sustainable---dependable, voluminous, high-quality energy source---sufficient materials base (probably utilized with near-perfect cycling)---and, among other things, social order and personal health. The physical elements of their systems will be so far cleverer and advanced than ours that these ideas that people throw out that "they're" coming here for our supplies [in anything] seems to me to be preposterous. A space-faring society that has learned to control its population and mine asteroids or create sun-surrounding Dyson Spheres--or whatever wonders far beyond those--isn't going to need our water or our meat. But they will have had to control themselves. Futurists see a "moment" looming that in many ways for our civilization is more dangerous than nuclear bombs, mid-east crises, global climate change, and the like. It is the growing ability of the "everyday Joe" to acquire technology that gives him destructive power. Since all Joes aren't "good", and in fact some are even sociopaths, some Joes will decide to use that power in a "disorderly manner". As the power gets larger and larger, the resultant disorder follows. If some increase in "morality" and good citizenship can not outrace this ability to acquire power, then it is likely that the systems of order and production cannot maintain consistent integrity in the face of these assaults, and advance will not occur [or worse]. Any highly advanced civilization has dealt with this crisis point somehow. Whether it's possible that some of them are latently good enough that their Joes
choose to do this, or whether the State has had to exercise some kind of Iron Hand, each of us can decide what we feel about the odds. Depending upon which path they took, it probably says something about who any visitor really is and what social orientation is represented. How do you imagine WE will handle this, by the way? We're right on top of that situation as we speak.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another thing that is not devoid of a kind of believable information involves the direction of societal priorities regarding health. We want it. They will want it. Nothing is more terrifying nor awesome than Death. We don't [even given our religions] want it. They won't want it. We don't want sickness nor pain either. Neither will they. The difference between us is that they'll have already made it happen. Nothing has been so universally driving [research-wise] than health care research. We're going to "get there" [total disease conquest; no cancer; no circulatory problems; no dementia; no aging]. Aging will be the last obstacle to go, but it
will go. It will have gone a long time ago for "them". They will not be "immortals" but they will be able to continue their lives until they have a catastrophic accident or they choose to end them themselves. This puts a lot more on the line in terms of what you decide to risk as you go about whatever you choose to occupy your days with. Some psychologists feel that such "indefinitely long lifespans" would markedly lower risk-taking in such a culture. Would they find means to just "lie-in-state" and experience their "reality" by mere brain-linked inputs safely away from the physical action? Or would they while away the endless hours playing in elaborate "private" environments designed not to include life-threatening risks?----or whatever other fantastic solutions they produce to solve the entertainment-without-death requirements?
There is the rub with indefinitely-long life. How to stay interested in "getting up in the morning" and facing the same day you've faced thousands of times before. [I know several friends who've said: yes, but I'd still like to try it for a few hundred years.]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I believe that the previous
could have something to do with UFOlogy and even religion. Again, I'm not claiming anything--just thinking. A long ultimately-boring life might need a big universe to maintain its interest. Going out there and seeing what you can see might be all you have left after you've "scienced" out your world from quarks to Higgs Bosons to Quantum and everyone understands the "Theory-of-Everything". Seeing what we other clowns are doing out there may be all that's left. Maybe they'd go in person, if the full zest was not really translated by direct cerebral communication, or maybe they just send their technology with the required "vicarious appreciation" sensorium [or video-game-implants-on steroids]. "Whoever" got off the "craft" or wiggled out of the "window" might be them--might be their surrogates. What are they searching for? Because I believe that spiritual questions will to some degree occupy all civilizations [particularly in their pasts], I also believe that these, so-called "Big", questions [death/afterlife; GOD; Soul; Freedom of will; even Middle reality/Magonia ] will be the only ones that they still have no answers for. Although individuals can differ, the general tenor of such a civilization will be, just by logical completeness, that they have decided that they know enough to have a confident vision of a spiritual reality and theology about things [with attendant morality guides], or they will have decided that its all bunkum, and there is nothing spiritual, just materialist reductionism [with its attendant values], or that they still don't know, but would like at least to see what other worlds think and maybe still learn. Civilization type one [the Spiritualists] would probably act differently on a visit than civilization type two [the Materialists]. Civilization type three would view the observed species a third way. All would be probably equally powerful at that stage and not wanting to mess with one another if it could possibly be avoided. There'd be an "understanding" between them. And because they all have motivation to "see', I believe that it is not ridiculous to imagine that all three types are "here" and elsewhere as well. One last point: Type one will not likely want to interfere with us on moral grounds---nothing is more significant in the moral view of reality than free choice. Making choices for us cancels the whole reason for existence. Type three civilizations will not want to interfere with us either---their whole hope is that we might come up with novel things that might lead to understandings they don't have. Inserting their own ideas or even manipulations, ruins their chance and makes us more like what they already know. Type two civilizations may, surprisingly not want to really interfere either. They in their "grab for whatever gusto you can get" non-morality still need us to be "different" and therefore "diverting". They might well want to "get-inside-some-of-our-heads" and vicariously live our lives and emotions , but not bend the whole culture toward something that
they're thinking about, not us. They already thought
their thoughts hundreds of times. This "analysis" [such as it is] surprised me--I certainly didn't go into it, way back when, thinking that I'd feel that
none of these super-civilizations would have it in their interests to be markedly interfering nor manipulative. And, that they might keep one another in check, particularly the type twos, from being any more intrusive than the whole group wanted. The ideas are void of data, that's right. I do not assume the truth of any of this--please, I beg you, don't claim that I do. I look at them as intriguing, however, because they would explain why over 60 years we have never had a "landing on the White House lawn" and why a percentage of us claim that one sort of ET is repetitively scaring the hell out of them, or otherwise messing with their emotions, and never leaving any testable clues behind. No. I'm NOT sure of any of this. It's all in my "gray basket"--no pun intended. Also, on the matter of what they're trying to learn. Who says it's about
us? What if part of it anyway is about the "other entities" that they lost touch with long ago but we still encounter here? I'll bet the Middle Kingdomers are messing with them just like they mess with us.
We don't have very substantial direct information as to what such ET-visitors would be (or are) like, despite what my friends in "abductions research" would have us believe---I suppose that I'll have to write something about that sometime, though I don't relish it. This is the last of this series of posts on possible natures of ET, and is by far the most "distant" from science---but since I've already put much of the earlier things into publication here and there, in a way this is why I wrote those others as a lead-in anyway. Those previous posts are all similar in content and attitude to the mainline convergent biological and SETI-type literatures, and I believe you can view them as at least responsible commentaries and not quackery. This one may be less defensible, but what the H___, it's a blog. I am going to try to guess about some important things about highly advanced civilizations. Take them for what they're worth to you. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Any such civilization, if it's still going, must have somehow found ways to be sustainable---dependable, voluminous, high-quality energy source---sufficient materials base (probably utilized with near-perfect cycling)---and, among other things, social order and personal health. The physical elements of their systems will be so far cleverer and advanced than ours that these ideas that people throw out that "they're" coming here for our supplies [in anything] seems to me to be preposterous. A space-faring society that has learned to control its population and mine asteroids or create sun-surrounding Dyson Spheres--or whatever wonders far beyond those--isn't going to need our water or our meat. But they will have had to control themselves. Futurists see a "moment" looming that in many ways for our civilization is more dangerous than nuclear bombs, mid-east crises, global climate change, and the like. It is the growing ability of the "everyday Joe" to acquire technology that gives him destructive power. Since all Joes aren't "good", and in fact some are even sociopaths, some Joes will decide to use that power in a "disorderly manner". As the power gets larger and larger, the resultant disorder follows. If some increase in "morality" and good citizenship can not outrace this ability to acquire power, then it is likely that the systems of order and production cannot maintain consistent integrity in the face of these assaults, and advance will not occur [or worse]. Any highly advanced civilization has dealt with this crisis point somehow. Whether it's possible that some of them are latently good enough that their Joes choose to do this, or whether the State has had to exercise some kind of Iron Hand, each of us can decide what we feel about the odds. Depending upon which path they took, it probably says something about who any visitor really is and what social orientation is represented. How do you imagine WE will handle this, by the way? We're right on top of that situation as we speak.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another thing that is not devoid of a kind of believable information involves the direction of societal priorities regarding health. We want it. They will want it. Nothing is more terrifying nor awesome than Death. We don't [even given our religions] want it. They won't want it. We don't want sickness nor pain either. Neither will they. The difference between us is that they'll have already made it happen. Nothing has been so universally driving [research-wise] than health care research. We're going to "get there" [total disease conquest; no cancer; no circulatory problems; no dementia; no aging]. Aging will be the last obstacle to go, but it will go. It will have gone a long time ago for "them". They will not be "immortals" but they will be able to continue their lives until they have a catastrophic accident or they choose to end them themselves. This puts a lot more on the line in terms of what you decide to risk as you go about whatever you choose to occupy your days with. Some psychologists feel that such "indefinitely long lifespans" would markedly lower risk-taking in such a culture. Would they find means to just "lie-in-state" and experience their "reality" by mere brain-linked inputs safely away from the physical action? Or would they while away the endless hours playing in elaborate "private" environments designed not to include life-threatening risks?----or whatever other fantastic solutions they produce to solve the entertainment-without-death requirements? There is the rub with indefinitely-long life. How to stay interested in "getting up in the morning" and facing the same day you've faced thousands of times before. [I know several friends who've said: yes, but I'd still like to try it for a few hundred years.]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I believe that the previous could have something to do with UFOlogy and even religion. Again, I'm not claiming anything--just thinking. A long ultimately-boring life might need a big universe to maintain its interest. Going out there and seeing what you can see might be all you have left after you've "scienced" out your world from quarks to Higgs Bosons to Quantum and everyone understands the "Theory-of-Everything". Seeing what we other clowns are doing out there may be all that's left. Maybe they'd go in person, if the full zest was not really translated by direct cerebral communication, or maybe they just send their technology with the required "vicarious appreciation" sensorium [or video-game-implants-on steroids]. "Whoever" got off the "craft" or wiggled out of the "window" might be them--might be their surrogates. What are they searching for? Because I believe that spiritual questions will to some degree occupy all civilizations [particularly in their pasts], I also believe that these, so-called "Big", questions [death/afterlife; GOD; Soul; Freedom of will; even Middle reality/Magonia ] will be the only ones that they still have no answers for. Although individuals can differ, the general tenor of such a civilization will be, just by logical completeness, that they have decided that they know enough to have a confident vision of a spiritual reality and theology about things [with attendant morality guides], or they will have decided that its all bunkum, and there is nothing spiritual, just materialist reductionism [with its attendant values], or that they still don't know, but would like at least to see what other worlds think and maybe still learn. Civilization type one [the Spiritualists] would probably act differently on a visit than civilization type two [the Materialists]. Civilization type three would view the observed species a third way. All would be probably equally powerful at that stage and not wanting to mess with one another if it could possibly be avoided. There'd be an "understanding" between them. And because they all have motivation to "see', I believe that it is not ridiculous to imagine that all three types are "here" and elsewhere as well. One last point: Type one will not likely want to interfere with us on moral grounds---nothing is more significant in the moral view of reality than free choice. Making choices for us cancels the whole reason for existence. Type three civilizations will not want to interfere with us either---their whole hope is that we might come up with novel things that might lead to understandings they don't have. Inserting their own ideas or even manipulations, ruins their chance and makes us more like what they already know. Type two civilizations may, surprisingly not want to really interfere either. They in their "grab for whatever gusto you can get" non-morality still need us to be "different" and therefore "diverting". They might well want to "get-inside-some-of-our-heads" and vicariously live our lives and emotions , but not bend the whole culture toward something that they're thinking about, not us. They already thought their thoughts hundreds of times. This "analysis" [such as it is] surprised me--I certainly didn't go into it, way back when, thinking that I'd feel that none of these super-civilizations would have it in their interests to be markedly interfering nor manipulative. And, that they might keep one another in check, particularly the type twos, from being any more intrusive than the whole group wanted. The ideas are void of data, that's right. I do not assume the truth of any of this--please, I beg you, don't claim that I do. I look at them as intriguing, however, because they would explain why over 60 years we have never had a "landing on the White House lawn" and why a percentage of us claim that one sort of ET is repetitively scaring the hell out of them, or otherwise messing with their emotions, and never leaving any testable clues behind. No. I'm NOT sure of any of this. It's all in my "gray basket"--no pun intended. Also, on the matter of what they're trying to learn. Who says it's about us? What if part of it anyway is about the "other entities" that they lost touch with long ago but we still encounter here? I'll bet the Middle Kingdomers are messing with them just like they mess with us.
No comments:
Post a Comment