the meaning of finding out there is life out there....

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

if tomorrow, say noontime, we find out that we are not alone,
what does that mean to us?

it would, I suppose depends on what kind of life we find… if it is microscopic
life, a single cell life form, then that would shake things up, but not to the
extent that finding out about alien intelligent life, that would cause total and complete
chaos on planet earth…

what the discovery of alien life would do to us, historically, philosophically,
emotionally, socially, and scientifically, cannot even be calculated…

for example, those who hold radical, extreme views of the superiority of
whites or of Americans or conservatives, would be vastly shocked…
their alleged superiority gone in a second to beings that are vastly superior
to us…if beings can announce their presence to us, that is far more
then we can do technically… we haven’t even sent human beings to Mars,
whereas these beings can, theoretically, travel to earth, billions of miles
(again depending on how first contact is made)

we human beings are no longer masters of the universe if intelligent life
is found…think of the first contact between the Spanish and the natives
of the new world and how that turned out for the natives… not well…
superior knowledge and technology never ends well for the ones who are
the “Lower” race/species… and that would be us humans…

so, what about such things as religions, god, philosophy, economics,
history…basically everything we know will get tossed out as being
woefully inadequate for understanding the new universe we find ourselves in…
on other words, everything you know or thought you knew, is wrong…

EVERYTHING you know is wrong…millions will have nervous breakdowns
like UR and Observe and pedreooo, all of them will have a nervous breakdown
along with every conservative on earth…because there is no tradition
or past to guide them into understanding or understanding the new reality
that we human beings are nothing but natives waiting to be overwhelmed
by the vastly superior alien beings…just like the natives were when the Spanish
landed in the new world…

now once we human beings have acclimated to the new reality that we are no
better then the anthills we destroy to build our roads and cities,
once we see our new reality, we can, with luck, we can reoriented ourselves
to the new reality that we are simply another species, nothing special in the
universe…

the one’s who will have the most problems in this new reality are the ones
who hold to hierarchies, that the universe has its superior and inferior members,
and we become, with the arrival of the aliens, the inferior species…
we no longer rank with god and the angels, we exists with the lower animals
like dogs and cats and cows… and our spot as the “higher” species goes to the
aliens…so ask yourself, if aliens arrive tomorrow, can I accept the fact
that I am no longer at the top of the food chain?
the superiority that we assumed all these years for myself and my race
and my species, no longer exists, what are you to do?

we can only hope to get the aliens, the vastly superior aliens, to accept
the concept that “all life is equal” just like the declaration of independence
says…

" we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men/human beings are created equal,
and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

so, what if these aliens, what if they are actually our creators?
do we allow them to dictate to us, the “certain unalienable rights”,
as creators are allowed to do…to us? what values now become
the values we seek given that aliens most certainly will have
values they consider to be the highest values, certainly not human values,
because we are the “lower” species… so what new values will become
our values? as it must… given that we are the less advance species…
and as conservatives have thought, the “higher” dictates to the “lower”…

and what becomes of our disciplines like history, philosophy, economics,
social science? after the superior aliens land, our understanding of the universe,
as we know it right now, goes into the garbage…everything we thought will be wrong…

in other words, we will have to rethink, reevaluate everything we know in light
of the arrival of the advance aliens…we will learn that our math and science
is nothing better then a baby’s understanding of math and science…

we will go from the top of the heap to the bottom, will we be able to adapt
and adjust the this new reality?

think about it, because I believe that within my remaining lifetime,
roughly 15 years, we will find out that we are not alone… and
then, what next?

Kropotkin

2

so these Aliens… do they have the same things we do?

do they have “souls” or do they have religion or philosophy
or history or economics?

I can only speculate, but I believe that Aliens don’t have any type
of religion… but let me explain that…

we know from planet earth, that those who hold to religions, be it
Christian or Buddhist or Catholic, begin with the “truth”…

that there is some truth which is at the start of religions…
for example, the Catholics hold that there is a god and there is sin
and that there is a heaven and hell… they begin with these truths…
they are in possession of the truth… and if you belief you hold the “truth”
then there is no incentive to seek out or find any other “truth”
if I hold the truth in my hand, then why would I bother to go out and find or seek
the “truth?” that is the reality of religions… they begin with a truth, thus
they don’t seek out any other “truth”… why? if you already hold the “truth”,
what is the point of seeking the “truth”
and that is why I don’t believe that Aliens don’t have religions…
they are clearly in advance of us, otherwise they couldn’t have
contacted us…but holding to a religion, bind us, ties us to
a set truth… we can no longer seek a truth is we already hold a truth,
and the same goes for Aliens… why seek the truth if you already hold it?

with that said, I believe that the Alien became a far more advance civilization
above us, because they did seek the “truth” instead of becoming complacent like
our earth religions have made us… we no longer seek the truth when we have a religious
“truth” and thus we hand onto to what we have, we become conservative…
which is to say, we begin with a “truth” which blinds us to other realities or truths,
that we might seek instead… to be conservative is to hold onto a truth unto death…
for truth seeking is about seeking what don’t have, instead of what we do have…
there is no point in seeking what we already have… which according to a conservative
is the “truth”…

Aliens hold to philosophy and science and history but not to religion…
because philosophy and history and science is about seeking something
we don’t have, which is a “truth”… religion is about having a “truth”
and holding onto that “TRUTH”… no, seeking a “truth” but having a “truth” is
the conservative method… that is why conservatives love religions so much…
there is no seeking the truth, the truth is already present and there in
religion…

thus I hold that any Aliens that can alert us to their presence, no longer
practice or holds to any type of religion…because a religion ties us
down to a certain and given “truth”… which is the opposite of philosophy
and history…for in those disciplines, we must seek the “truth”… it isn’t
already given as it is in a religion…

Kropotkin

3

if we look at what philosophy is, a rational explanation
of human experiences, then philosophy for an Alien, should
be, should be a rational explanation of Alien experiences…

but what exactly does that mean? let us look at it this way…
We have an historical experience of Napoleon Bonaparte…
we have what we call Napoleonism… which is?
according to my dictionary: The policy of Napoleon 1 or the Napoleons,
2. Attachment to or advocacy of the Napoleonic dynasty…

but to an Alien, try to explain what Napoleonism is?
to understand Napoleonism, one would have to get the Alien
to grasp the historical, economic, social, philosophical, political
context of Napoleon…to make sense of Napoleon, we have to
understand the context of Napoleon in history, French History…
you would have to weave in that history, religion, history, economics,
social history… try to explain Napoleon without reference to
the Catholic church…

so, this Alien, he/she/it, who knows, we certainly don’t,
their philosophy is based upon experiences, the rational explanation
of their experiences…but can we share experiences that are as
radical different as an Alien experience and human experience?

so, I explain Napoleon and the Alien says, Glich… ok, so what does that mean?
his understanding of the universe derives from his experience of the universe,
and so the word, Glich is a one word explanation of that experience…
but, just as we must put Napoleonism into context, the Alien must
put the word, Glich into context…

to be honest, I don’t even think communication is possible between
these Aliens and human beings because of this vast difference in
understanding of experiences…I say, I am in love… how would
we explain Love to an Alien… I can’t even explain it to another human
being little less an Alien from Polaris…I say, my sky is blue…
and the Alien thinks you are insane because where he/she/it is from,
the sky is black, green and purple…

we human beings have two biological sexes, male and female but we
see, even in human beings, humans self identifying as Binary, or
homosexual or bisexual or asexuality…or perhaps as pansexual
or polysexual…I can’t even explain to another human being what
Polysexual even means because I have absolutely no idea…
but to that Alien, perhaps we have very few possible sexual identities,
where he/she/it comes from perhaps that there are dozens or perhaps
there are hundreds of sexual possibilities… we can’t understand how they
have so many and they can’t understand why we have so few…
how would we communicate that to another? Glich? I have no fucking idea…
my experiences don’t allow me to understand little less judge Glich…

we understand our roles, our sexual roles by social, biological,
historical, political and philosophical ideas…our experiences
underlie our understanding of what our sexual roles means,
if we have no experiences with Glich, then we cannot begin to
understand what that means…and Aliens cannot understand what
it means to be pansexual if they have no experiences with it…
hell, I am human and I have no experiences with “pansexual”
I have no clue what that means…

so we cannot even understand their philosophy or their history or
their economics because we do not have shared or comparable experiences…
and we understand things through experiences…without any experiences,
there can be no understanding…

it is quite likely that the only possible means of communication with
an Alien is through math… but that assumes that we have a shared math
and we might not…math for an Alien might be similar to what we think
of as an emotional experience… or perhaps what we think of as “higher” math,
the Aliens might think of as the stuff they teach the little ones on their way
to the really “high” math… what we teach in Grad school, they might teach in
first grade… and that shit, we can’t even begin to comprehend without
a vast amount of experiences that is far beyond what we are doing now…

it is possible that what we think of as 3.14, pi, is an entire philosophical
understanding of the universe…an entire philosophy or perhaps it is
a nursery rhyme for little children…and while we “kids” play with
Pi, the adults are engaged in Real math in which pi is kids play…
or perhaps the concept of pi is just a figment of our imagination
and actually doesn’t mean anything… but we think it does because
we “worked” it out… like the crazy man who has created an entire
universe in his head and that universe, that universe is real, at least to him…
but it doesn’t exists for anyone else… because it is make believe, made up shit…
and pi, pi could just be more made up shit…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing…

and that Alien could be just shaking his head and wondering about us children,
and how come we haven’t hurt each other yet with our stupidity…our
collective stupidity…

it all comes down to experiences… we old folks are wiser then the young kids
because we have more experiences… and Aliens are wiser then human beings
because they have far more experiences… millions of years of experiences
compare to our ten thousand year experiences…and perhaps that is why
Aliens don’t contact us… we might be just little children to them…
would you go out of your way to contact a baby? I wouldn’t either…
they might not contact us until we actually have something to say to them,
something worth listening to… right now, we might be engaged in baby talk
to Aliens out there… and when we learn to speak “adult” they might, might
decide to speak to us, or not…

Kropotkin

4

we have been told that dolphins are smart, very smart…
but let us think about what a dolphin would tell us about
its experiences… think about it… if we explained to a
dolphin what our experiences are, would that dolphin understand?

I walked on land… makes sense to me and to you… but a dolphin
doesn’t walk on land, its swims… how would I communicate
walking to an animal that has no experiences with walking?

I went to San Francisco today with my wife… we walked around
15,000 steps and by the end, my hip was killing me…
so, how would I explain that to a dolphin that doesn’t know what a step is,
doesn’t know what a hip is and why would a hip hurt if you are walking?
what is the connection? the very medium I am engaged with, the air,
how would I explain to a dolphin that I don’t have to surface to breath air…
I can just breath air… and how would a dolphin explain living in water,
while still breathing air?

and does an Alien breath air? or perhaps they don’t breathe at all,
perhaps they need a machine to breath with… or perhaps they must
breath something beside oxygen… and thus that very fact, that difference
in breathing between the two elements, makes all the difference in the world
and we cannot understand each other…and how do we compare experiences when
our experiences are so vastly different?

we see sex as natural and pleasurable, perhaps the Aliens don’t think so at all,
perhaps, what is their equivalent to sex, is quite painful and considered to
be “dirty” because it is so painful… who knows?
perhaps they practice sex every single hour, on the hour, no matter who
is involved or nearby?..

perhaps the experiences of sex is so vastly different that we cannot, ever
understand each other sexual practices… and we cannot make any sense
of their sexual practices because it is so different and out of our experiences…

but sex itself isn’t just a physical act, it has a biological, historical,
economic, political, philosophical and physical and psychological
acts/ needs that cannot ever be understand by Alien races… the sexual act
is emotional, physical and psychological… and how would you explain that
to a species that doesn’t have those experiences with sex?
it is as much hormones as it is psychological…

and sex has a evolutionary aspect that cannot be overestimated…
and as humans and Aliens have had a different evolution in their respective
planets, that we might not be able to understand what turns an Alien “On” sexually…
that is part of the evolutionary story of human beings…what turns us on…
and Aliens might not understand the human fascination with breasts, legs, the ass,
even a foot… and what might turn on a Alien? perhaps the 4 feet or the
eighth eye or perhaps that third arm? I can’t even make sense of what turns human
beings on, little less what might turn on, if they even do that, aliens…
perhaps they no longer need to become excited as we humans become
excited about body parts…perhaps, perhaps sex is emotional, or perhaps
it is intellectual, or perhaps it is solely for the creation of other beings, or
perhaps they have machines that do that for them and they don’t need to
get “down and dirty” as we humans must…

think of the movie ET… and now think of ET having sex?
what would that look like? this is just one example of how
our experiences might create such a difference between us
and Aliens that we might not be able to communicate with each other…

that there are so many examples of the possible differences between
Aliens and human beings that we might not even be able to make any kind
of connection between aliens and human beings… and why contact
beings that you have absolutely no connection to or with?

think of an octopus… think of how an octopus would connect with
a human being? and now magnify that with thinking about how an
Alien would connect with a human being?

Kropotkin

5

I have traveled overseas… Costa Rica and several countries in Europe…
and the question of communication has, at time, arisen…
how do I make myself known? I carry my little phrase book,
I hear Danke, I reply Bitte Schon… at least my phrase book tells
me to do so…but what if that day, I am not carrying my little phrase book…
how would I know how to respond? I could watch other people, see what
they say and do, I could simply ask, I could just respond in English, your welcome…
and perhaps they will know what you are saying, or not…

so, where is my guide book for Alien speak? how would I know what
they say, if, if they even speak at all? they might communicate an entirely
different way… perhaps they have a mathematical language and responses
for them is done via math… An alien might say, a two… which is thank you
and my response might be, a 3…who knows…

but I don’t have a phrase book to tell me how to respond to the Alien language…
language is a way, means of describing, explaining, understanding who we are,
what we are, where we are, when we are, how we are and why we are…

If I fall down, I say in English, I fell down…
in German, Ich fiel runter…
and in Alien? Glich… we can see some similarities between the English and German…
the I and the ich… so fell is Fiel and down is runter… the way we speak is fairly
similar… but would an Alien, coming from a completely different environment
use language the same way we would use it? no, of course not…
our use of language is evolutionary, environmental, social, historical,
philosophical… if we follow the English language back far enough,
we can see the influx of the Germanic languages… there is
a shared past between German and English…

so what point of contact or shared connection would we have with
an Alien species? we don’t share an past, we don’t share some sort of
connection like German and English share, our evolutionary history is
vastly different…we live on a water world, these Aliens might have lived
on a gas world or a very rocky world with much less water…

that fact changes the nature of discourse because our history, past,
environment changes our very nature and how we communicate…
different environments creates different means of communication…

Kropotkin

6

You’re assuming aliens would behave the same as humans,
just on a more advanced / scientific level.

The fact that we even exist shows some kind of tolerance.