posted on Apr, 9 2009 @ 05:17 PM
Very interesting. This thread has really got me thinking. Just consider the human race from an objective perspective. Assuming that the Earth is a
living organism itself, then in order for it to stay healthy every creature on it must have either a positive or neutral effect on it . We as humans,
advanced though we believe ourselves to be, have only a negative impact. If the Earth is a living organism then we are a disease. When any creature
contracts a disease, one of two possible outcomes can occur. The host will either fight the disease off, or die. For us this means that in order to
survive we must either stop attacking our planet or we will have to leave her behind (or die with her!). And nobody knows how many, if any suitable
alternatives exist. One might assume that there are a great many billions, but whether any of them are close enough to be of any use to us and whether
we will ever become technologically advanced enough to ever take advantage of any of them is pure conjecture. Any race advanced enough to be capable
of FTL travel may be billions of years older than us and view us as a glitch in the development of life in our solar system that could very well see
the end of it.
From the other side however, they may have long ago reached this crucial 'tipping point' themselves and seek to help us through it. This said I
personally believe that the former is a more likely scenario and that any race capable of mastering interstellar, intergalactic or indeed
interuniversal (have I just coined a new phrase?!) travel could not possibly have been as warlike as ourselves without at some point self
destructing.
As a result of this I would imagine most if not all truly advanced civilisations would view us as little more than an intermediary species,
interesting to study but greatly less successful in survival terms than pretty much every other creature ever to have evolved.
To quote a comment from another user that I read recently on ATS,
'If I was in the garden and saw a mosquito buzzing around me, my first instinct would not be to exchange technology with it.'