The Smartless podcast recently had Luis Elizondo as a guest. He's known for being a former intelligence guy and has repeatedly said there are things the government is hiding that we are likely ready to hear. Whether that means aliens or something else, it serves to show that humanity needs to understand its relative place in the universe, which may cause it to realign its priorities. The interview is excellent, in that he gives a lot of analogies that help you understand how much humanity doesn't know. Whether or not what he's talking about is real, or if he's legitimate, doesn't matter. The point is that our cultural departure from reason, science and expertise is hubris at best, willful stupidity at worst.
If we found out today that aliens were real, how would we respond? And I mean "aliens" more in the metaphorical sense, as something so profound and surprising that it causes us to reframe our understanding of our place in the universe. It's hard to believe that people are trying to scapegoat diversity as something preventing hiring on merit, when in fact diversity efforts are intended to guarantee that people are hired on merit. It's hard to believe that basic economic principles are being ignored in order to placate people who feel like they're victims of... something. It's hard to believe that government thinks that art is dangerous. But here we are.
My understanding of humanity is that we are little more than a rounding error in the grand scope of the universe. What makes us human, and different from the other animals, is our ability to be empathetic and help each other. A subset of the population leans into rejecting that humanity, largely to exercise power over others, and that's a function of survival that "lower" animals exhibit. If we're to really embrace our superiority, it seems to me that we need to embrace that humanity.
The weirdest thing about this is that I think a majority portion of the humanity rejection committee is older, which is to say they have fewer years ahead of them than behind them. I'm in that cohort now, probably only by a few years (if we're to forecast a continual improvement in life expectancy), and my motivation has shifted from a youthful sense of morality to an appreciation for the relative brevity of our lives. But in both cases, my m.o. is to want the best for all humans, regardless of where they landed in the birth lottery. Trying to put me and people who look or think like me at the top feels pretty stupid, and anti-humanity, considering we'll all be dust before too long anyway.
So maybe we need the aliens to shock us into that reality. Trying to appeal to a sense of humanity isn't working, maybe because they don't have that sense. Maybe they need something to fear that isn't other humans. I don't understand why we need to fear anything, other than to satisfy our animal instincts, but clearly we've not evolved enough.
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