Massless, ‘invisible’ particles. Exceeding the speed of light. Entanglement. Much to process. Above all, alien species presumed to be interesting enough to want to observe. Let’s assume they’re intelligent. We might wonder how intelligent. There’s no reason to assume the timeline of the aliens’ existence matches ours. There’s a high probability it doesn’t. So maybe they’re a hundred thousand years, or a million years, or five hundred million years older than us. With that kind of head start evolutionarily, the aliens may well be unimaginably smarter than us. In turn, their science, technology, social systems, mythologies, physical self-optimisation, and other defining features may well be unimaginably more advanced than ours. Mind-bogglingly so! We wonder, then, how we might deal with the blunt-force trauma to our long-held assumptions about our ‘exceptionalism’. To our uniqueness. To our relevance. To our place in the universe. To our purpose. To our meaning. To our relationship to an original cause. To our destiny. What new motivations will animate us?
What if we saw in the life of those aliens things which drove us to frenzied jealousy, obsessive voyeurism, deep frustration, or thoughts of destruction? I saw Youngjin's cartoon as referring to things far closer to home. Only in recent generations could microscopic particles reveal to us what was happening in secret or inaccessible places.
Massless, ‘invisible’ particles. Exceeding the speed of light. Entanglement. Much to process. Above all, alien species presumed to be interesting enough to want to observe. Let’s assume they’re intelligent. We might wonder how intelligent. There’s no reason to assume the timeline of the aliens’ existence matches ours. There’s a high probability it doesn’t. So maybe they’re a hundred thousand years, or a million years, or five hundred million years older than us. With that kind of head start evolutionarily, the aliens may well be unimaginably smarter than us. In turn, their science, technology, social systems, mythologies, physical self-optimisation, and other defining features may well be unimaginably more advanced than ours. Mind-bogglingly so! We wonder, then, how we might deal with the blunt-force trauma to our long-held assumptions about our ‘exceptionalism’. To our uniqueness. To our relevance. To our place in the universe. To our purpose. To our meaning. To our relationship to an original cause. To our destiny. What new motivations will animate us?
ReplyDeleteMaybe that when we question how to be in the world, that world is much larger than our 'exceptionalism,' a relief for our imagination?
DeleteMaybe that when we question how to be in the world, that world is much larger than our 'exceptionalism,' a relief for our imagination?
DeleteWhat if we saw in the life of those aliens things which drove us to frenzied jealousy, obsessive voyeurism, deep frustration, or thoughts of destruction? I saw Youngjin's cartoon as referring to things far closer to home. Only in recent generations could microscopic particles reveal to us what was happening in secret or inaccessible places.
ReplyDelete