Adam Blatner

Considering extra-terrestrials, E-Ts. What if they’re really nice? There have been many movies that represent sentient beings from other planets as hostile and powerful, from The War of the Worlds on. But what if in fact extra-terrestrials do exist, and they definitely do not want to conquer you or eat you? What if that notion is a huge, compelling projection? That is, if we had a superior technology—way superior, not nearly well matched—no contest, we would be sorely tempted to conquer others, enslave others. We’d be able to rationalize ourselves as moral, too. Various countries did this throughout the 18th through the mid-20th century! Do you think that we’re so far beyond being colonialistic and cruel and lower consciousness, or are we just better at hypocrisy and disguising these baser motivations?

Note that some kinds of cleverness do not make a culture moral. Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s demonstrated that, but people didn’t get it. We portrayed them as dumb in order to win the war but they were in fact very clever and almost won. It’s just that we had tons of resources and millions more people and it was a matter of getting there with the most-est. The idea that they were weak or foolish was pure propaganda. Of course we sold ourselves on being “the good guys” but in fact many sub-groups in our own country, while not being as terrible—they didn’t commit mass genocide—were still pretty bad: It was an era in which people felt noble and good while imposing terrible oppression on several minority groups. That we’ve progressed somewhat should not blind us to the degree to which many people still rationalize their tendencies to demean and oppress.

So when we made movies of “advanced” technological cultures we tended to make them hostile,  predatory, while it was us who were innocent victims. I have been informed by Zordak, a lil’ green guy in a mini-flying saucer that those species that were predatory and relatively high-tech were inclined to squabble among themselves and in the long run self-destruct. Truly higher consciousness kept away from all these—and us, too!

Why did higher consciousness keep away from lower consciousness? Why didn’t they send “missionaries.” First, missionary work doesn’t sell well. When it becomes economically advantageous to convert, they become tools of the dominant economic and political group—both converts and missionaries. Second, it’s deeply hypocritical, based on the 19th century illusion that one culture’s worldview is cosmically more true and noble than another culture’s.

Third, missionaries rationalize the degree to which they are co-opted. They think they’re selling virtue when in fact they’re just a hypocritical foot-in-the-door for the exploitative economic and political forces who benefit from their work. These forces in turn are both clever and stupid: they allow the people being colonized and enslaved to get weaponry so they can be savage with each other. Meanwhile, the missionaries pretend they’re helping and bringing goodness—well intentioned, perhaps, but in denial of the degree to which they’re being co-opted and exploited by the politico-economic forces.

So, although higher consciousness knows and practices the arts of peacemaking, they also know that humanity is so far from ready for this that whatever efforts that are made to do good will quickly be turned into evil. This may not be true in every case, of course. There are scattered individuals and small groups who may be into more noble virtues. But they, too, can easily be subverted. Larger size groups almost immediately become pressured to front for exploitative politics. Until humanity gets past this no higher consciousness being will get fooled into being co-opted this way. The movie “Avatar” is all too true as a myth of a struggle between humanity’s profit-oriented mentality and a more peaceful and ecologically stable culture. (In that movie it was the humans who were more technically advanced but had lower consciousness.)

It will begin by noting that higher consciousness has integrated a ethos of kindness and inclusiveness—and that’s difficult to envision. It might begin by daring to imagine this kind of ethos, that being grown-up is nice, not mean. Humanity may be ready to begin to envision this and I hope it will.  What’s wrong with this critique?