© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 98
I spent a few minutes watching television this week. An astronomer was describing the search for extraterrestrial life forms using radio waves. These things don’t really hold my interest anymore. I am sure there is life out there. The sort of pride that says ‘I am the only one’ is not one of my sins. But if there is some other race of beings, advanced enough to figure out that we are here, and how to reach us, it is probably avoiding us, and with several good reasons.
For a start, there are all those movies that either involve capturing injured aliens and dissecting them, or alternatively calling out the troops and going to war with them. The very idea of an alien visiting earth under these conditions is about as likely as a Episcopalian proselytizer making it through a one week tent-revival in Baghdad. That is, assuming that martyrdom is not an option.
Then there is the neighbourhood. As a species go, we are probably located in one of the more disreputable parts of the galaxy, and our behaviour seems to fit in with the idea of a galactic slum as well. Like any slum-dwellers, we litter our environment, fight with one another and make a racket that even I can hear, even though I am a part of it.
Finally there is the fact that the vast majority of our transmissions into space are television and radio. I am sure they won’t want to spend too much time with people who watch daytime television, soap opera and infomercials. They probably have enough of their own, anyway.
If I were an alien, I would give Earth a miss. Planet category: dung heap, populated by the sort of psychos you wouldn’t want to visit just in case they figured out the way to your house and decided to return the call. And yes, I am taking into account that the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy says of Earth, “Mostly harmless.”
All this is fairly bad news for all those freaks who secretly hope that a UFO will abduct them and take them to a place where they will find Elvis and Jim Morrison engaged in deep, meaningful conversation by the banks of some babbling brook. Sorry guys. It just won’t happen. I guess the best thing you can hope for is some gratuitous dissection, and perhaps an unexpected baby with an extra-large head and cats-pupil eyes, a couple of months after the fact.
But I can still sympathize with them. There is something to be said for bright, shiny cities with strangely courteous citizens, no pollution and very little crime. On the other hand, it could be that the wannabe abductees are confusing the alien utopia with Singapore.
I suppose the guys who want the grand alien tour have reached the conclusion that to find the greener grass, the small local hill just won’t cut it: that there is no hope on this planet, or to be found within themselves. In other words, the hill just has to be that much bigger to have a greener side to it.
It’s not an unbelievable sentiment. We face global warming and rising shorelines around us, and water wars and drought on the land that is left to us. It’s not a good time to be alone. But as I said, for all effective purposes, there aren’t any kindly hearted aliens to rescue us with wisdom and better places. There is only us, and only this reality.
People find hope in strange places, even when there is no logical hope to be found. In the absence of any better reality, look to a comic book for a superhero, some photographic rag with photos of a star, or look to the skies and wait for the silver discs to show up.
The ability to find hope, even in the most hopeless situations, must be one of the keys to our survival as a species. When everything is collapsing around us, only blind, unreasoning optimism can keep us on our feet.
I wonder what our ancestors thought as the leopards encircled them? How a tree was bound to grow?
Perhaps there are no aliens, though our uniqueness is unlikely. But as long as there is a sense of desperation, we don’t need proof that they are out there: our hope and optimism will tell us that they exist.
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