Debate: Should We Fear or Welcome Alien Contact?

Personally, I am not fearful of alien contact itself. I have been looking forward to it for a long time, knowing that due to the overwhelming amount of evidence, that beings from other places have been here before, maybe even now.

What I do fear is the reaction of the majority of humanity. We have become somewhat conditioned, through various forms of media, to believe that aliens will be hostile and mean no good to this planet. Think 'War of the Worlds.'

I know that my own family members who haven't woken up yet will literally freak out. I think that will be the widespread reaction. I believe there will be violence, and the aliens may feel the need to defend themselves, if they are here on friendly terms.

So personally, I welcome their arrival, but I do not feel the lasting outcome will be good, due to human nature.

What a shame. I could be a wonderful thing.

I wouldn't go as far as to 'fear' alien contact, but as with any unknown that carries some degree of risk, we should proceed with caution. We might assume that they would be peaceful for a number of reasons, but what happens if we are wrong in our assumptions? The fact is, we don't know what their intentions, motivations or capabilities would be.

They might be absolute pacifists, but it seems reasonable to me that rather than risk everything on that assumption and before you roll out the welcome mat, you'd better have a viable Plan B in place just in case your aliens happen to arrive in a pissed off mood for whatever reason.

Shoot twice and ask questions later. We are violent. Lets stick with what we know. We didn't get to the top of the food chain by sitting down and negotiating with everyone.

Have a great deal of respect for Steven Hawkings, but in this case his own logic contradicts his point.

If science proves to him that planets capable of supporting life could be fairly common in the universe, what motive would any of these other races have to take over Earth?

Also, contrary to popular belief, the human race is not warlike. It's just a small psychopathic percentage of us who are. That's why they have to spend so much time and effort on propaganda to get everyone behind a war effort. The average human just wants a peaceful life living happily among family and friends. So projecting human qualities onto an alien race based on just a few events becomes even more dubious.

reply to post by True-seer


Neither. But blindly trusting and receiving such race as saviors with open arms without knowing with whom we are really dealing with wouldn't be the bestest way to go either.

No reason to fear, no reason to treat them as gods. Only reasons to doubt, question until the nature of such (theoretical) encounter is revealed.

In my opinion no civilization that is able to travel in space in such a way, is light years ahead of our current evolutionary stage would have a single reason to contact us at this point. Unless to either save us from something, prevent us from destroying something of value (like Earth's life I suppose) or other interests in resources that we take from granted and is of value to them.

So for me would be more or less like this "Aliens are here? Cool, let's start a diplomatic relation and give it time until we understand what the hell they want with Earth and consequently us to call them as friends."

HMMMMMM lets see here....


Human species is a predator....
All APEX species are predators.....

ALIENS are most likely PREDATORS.....

Might not work out too well for us technological inferior species...

Supreme Human Power!! we dont need none of them Darky green skinned people in our world.
No but really i go with the pioneer spirit and would love to meet an alien people.
Sure it could get rocky with differences and we could wipe each other out. but hey we may be able to help each other out.
I would love to see a Roddenberry type future with a federation and galactic peace.
But i am but an idiot dreamer. we'll prolly wipe one of our species out but hey ya gotta break some eggs to burn yer omlett.

We shouldn't Fear anything or anyone!! Fear is the lack of knowledge yet to be understood. I think it would be a great and necessary change for planet earth as well as the fact that it would put a lot of egos in place knowing that we aren't alone.

hmm.. it kinda depends on the what spiritual level the aliens are..

for example, the andromedans/pleidans are considered to be highly spiritual and advanced race.. I dont think they would have any plans for invasion or enslavement as its just wrong .. so yea, i would welcome such aliens

but again on the other hand.. the reptilians are considered to be evil.. and it would be a mistake to welcome them!

I strongly believe that there are good and bad aliens. If we make contact with the wrong group, yes it could be very bad for us.

You make public contact with one, it will cause a domino effect. One thing I have heard the bads threaten to go around causing terror if first contact occurs.

I am in contact with a lot of the ETs that will be involved in first contact. They have run me through a simulation of one of the programs they will do for first contact. Its basically an introduction to telepathy, and also to get to know whats in your region(ETs).

It was ran by a plethora of ETs, a large collaboration, both positive and negative ETs. They all got their words and influences in. It went through phases, some were worse than others. It went through waves of populations. Some of them had better waves than others but overall it was very diverse. This simulation took about 2 months and I believed it was real at the time. I was talking to simulated entities by a computer.

Overall there will be a lot of happy people with first contact. A decent bit of hysteria. A bunch of paranoid people etc. That is why a closeby ET friend of ours(nordics possibly) would come out and cure aids right off the bat. And they look like us so its hard to say they are demons(religious crowd).

They would attack the medical side of things and cure as many ailments/diseases as they could. And overall get us healthy again. Give us new foods to grow and eat. New media, movies/music up the yin yang in all different kinds.

All good ETs for some time period fly in our dimension so we can get an idea of truly the traffic that goes on here(approx half of it lol give or take). I'm sure it would astonish people. One time the good ETs i know said look up I was outside smoking a cigarette. I looked up and instantly saw a ship enter our atmosphere. Looked like a shooting star at first, but then slowed down in our atmosphere. For the next few minutes I saw all kinds of UFOs flying around the same region of the sky.entering, going away, etc.

Anyway, first contact would be the best thing that ever happened to us. And at the same time there could be widespread more fear than any other time due to awareness of negative ETs. And their visitations upon people.

Overall ET contact would have a great effect on humanity IMO. We would wake up in a lot of ways and mature as a people faster than before. Finally people would have something extremely interesting for pretty much all people the study of life in this universe.

It would also clear up a lot of spiritually lost people, religious and non. It would be a great thing IMO.

[edit on 4-5-2010 by Myuzik]

Originally posted by thomas_
reply to post by True-seer

 

Neither. But blindly trusting and receiving such race as saviors with open arms without knowing with whom we are really dealing with wouldn't be the bestest way to go either.

No reason to fear, no reason to treat them as gods. Only reasons to doubt, question until the nature of such (theoretical) encounter is revealed.

We're also getting off to a bad start even just throwing around the idea an Alien race could mean us harm, because that's all some people need to hear to open fire on any visitors 'just in case'. It would be far better to assume they're peaceful until they prove otherwise, if we're going to make any assumptions at all.

[edit on 4-5-2010 by Risen]

To be completely honest we do not need to fear them until a certain moment in history occurs. When we get off of this rock and colonize another planet like for instance Mars, then we should fear alien contact, that is when they will see us for what we will become in the future, locusts. They will come to us with two options 1. destroy to save the rest of the universe, or and I am very hopefull of this one, to expain to us the rules of what we are doing and try to help us better ourselves. Too bad nobody wants to give up their slice of the pie to better the country much less the world so I see all of this happening way after I die which is sad Im 27....

Originally posted by Risen
Have a great deal of respect for Steven Hawkings, but in this case his own logic contradicts his point.

If science proves to him that planets capable of supporting life could be fairly common in the universe, what motive would any of these other races have to take over Earth?

Maybe we are a nearby race suitable for enslavement? Let's face it - we are both psychically and mentally weak. Without our technology we are roadkill.

Edit to add

I imagine "they" would use technology similar to EMP to wipe out all communication on the earth as the first step. Then maybe "they" would target our power plants and take them offline. Panic would ensue and "they" could just swoop in and do their business. Classic alien invasion-style.

[edit on 4-5-2010 by cripmeister]

Originally posted by Zaanny
HMMMMMM lets see here....


Human species is a predator....
All APEX species are predators.....

ALIENS are most likely PREDATORS.....

Might not work out too well for us technological inferior species...

Why does it have to be "apex predators"? Maybe once you get to a certain point of advancement, you evolve out of the ego driven way of domination. And move on to something more harmonious and intune with the surroundings of nature. I think the fact we've been allowed to blow eachother up for aslong as we have, could say a couple of things. 1- they're sitting there just laughing at us, waiting until they get bored of laughing at us before they pounce. 2 - they're keeping back because they're not supposed to intervine (for what ever reason, but it would imply some form of motive other than violence) or 3, the intergalactic face palm is still being played out.

Sure, universes could be teaming with ravernous mutant beasts devouring all in their path. But if that's the case, there'll be no "contact" as such, it'll just be "nom nom nom" "aarrgghh" "nom nom nom"

I say welcome them, I reckon they'll be ok. They may bring space music

Originally posted by cripmeister

Originally posted by Risen
Have a great deal of respect for Steven Hawkings, but in this case his own logic contradicts his point.

If science proves to him that planets capable of supporting life could be fairly common in the universe, what motive would any of these other races have to take over Earth?

Maybe we are a nearby race suitable for enslavement? Let's face it - we are both psychically and mentally weak. Without our technology we are roadkill.

But we're also pretty damned annoying, and i say that as a member of the human race myself. To a much more advanced race It would be like enslaving a planet full of Howler Monkeys. Too much trouble, and ultimately just a pain in the ass.

Are these the new aliens?

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

And nobody cared.

Now it's your turn. What do you think? Should we be fearful of alien contact?

Aliens are contacted everyday on ATS. Aren't people already enslaved (mentally challenged), they may be delirious by the time they arrive.
Perhaps Reagan was right "Star Wars" is upon us. I wonder which aliens the world will choose or maybe the NWO made the choice already. I wish both agendas were available online. Oh, but, is there really a difference between snake and dragon doctrine?

if they wanted to get rid of us, they would have already.

Globally, it happens, it is called genocide. Doing away with one set of genes and replacing it with another.

We must have mutual respect, for one another

People do not respect each other, so I think this is a really far stretch. Imagine some strange looking creature with scales and tails telling you how to live. Humans would be reduced to "stepford" beings and or "soylent green".

any species that is advanced as they are thought to be would have gone thru what we have at some point in thier evolution

I know "fences make good neighbors", but, I wonder if they can climb?

Once we have dont that we can push new technology
we have to everyone for the wellbeing of everyone.

Can anyone translate jibberish?

a majority of us Humans would and are ready for contact.

Humans, no, other aliens yes, they would want like company. IMO if you believe, you need to evolve then I question whether you are human.

reply to post by True-seer


Let me paraphrase... should we fear or welcome contact with people that smell kind of different, speak a different language and have a far different level of education from us? Should we fear or welcome *insert your least favorite minority here*...

Until we can get over our fear of humans that merely hold a different belief system, sexual preference or race, how exactly are we going to embrace aliens? better yet, why would a purportedly highly advanced civilization want to bother with us? Would you go to a third world country just to go meet the people there? eat the local food? There is very few of us would actually want to do that. That's what visiting here must be like for an advanced alien civilization.

-rrr

Regardless of whether or not aliens are evil, to me they're still family. I therefore openly welcome contact and interaction. I think we'll grow because of it and honestly, I don't think we even have much of a choice. They're coming, they'll be here soon, and that's all there is to it. Of course, people have been 'expecting' them forever, but our species stands at a crossroads in so many areas that it would seem that the best time to do it is soon.

reply to post by True-seer


Kinda on the fence on this one True-Seer.
On one side I would love to see first contact, and hope they would be benevolent, peaceful beings with our best interests in mind.
On the other side, they may be less than benevolent, maybe even openly hostile. In which case I wouldn't want to meet them.
One alien race may wish to nurture us a mother would her children.
Another may wish to eradicate us from the face of the earth.
IMO there are already 1 or more alien races in attendance on this planet.
And with the exception of the chance sightings and rare reports of actual abductions, they tend to leave us alone. Which one might interpret as, if not benevolence, then at least indifference on their part. In any case, there doesn't seem to be a lot we can do to either invite them to Sunday Brunch, or to provoke all-out hostility.
Assuming the ones already in attendance wish us no ill-will, I agree somewhat with Mr.Hawking in that we maybe shouldn't try to draw the attention of the ones who may.
Noro

why should you do either?
be smart, proceed with caution.
ask questions, take nothing at face value.