In honour of today being ‘Science Fiction Day’, (although for some of you it’s already the 3rd – my, how the year has flown! – someone, somewhere, decided that Isaac Asimov’s Birth Day, 2nd January, ought to be the date for it) I offer up the following thoughts …
… there are a gazillion Science Fiction stories (and a not inconsiderable number of Fantasy stories too) out there, and a good many of them have at their core the premise that there is, or was, an alien species that seeded ‘life’ throughout the universe.
The science of the day tells us that there probably isn’t any ‘life as we know it’ anywhere else, only us. I don’t know if that’s true or not … but what if … it was?
What if we, homo-sapiens were to be the seed species of the universe.
What if we didn’t extinguish our Selves over the next couple of centuries.
What if we managed to get through our adolescents-picking-at-pimples-and-poking-each-other-with-sharp-sticks stage, and actually grew up?
Look at what we’ve achieved, in spite of the ridiculous amount of stick-poking that has gone on for an embarrassingly high tally of millennia. (excluding the on-going invention of more and more sophisticated ways of poking sticks at each other … I know that a lot of life-affirming/saving tech came out of that ‘stick-poking’ research, but who’s to say we wouldn’t’ve got there anyway?)
What if we outgrew our self-obsessed selfishness, our soul-sucking greed, our terrors that sink so easily into genocide, until the urge to create finally subsumes the urge to destroy. Not for just a few ‘enlightened’ beings here and there, but for the entire species.
What wonders would we see?
I think it’s in our nature to quest. To find what’s over the next hill, the next mountain, the next solar system, the next galaxy.
And what if we didn’t find anyone else?
What would that grown-up version of our species, our Selves, do?
Lagoon nebula
Check out the Hubble telescope website for more glorious images.
-oOo-
The thing with calculating odds, (which is basically what the article on ‘is there life elsewhere’, is doing) is that it’s a bit like playing the pokies or selecting lottery numbers. A certain kind of ‘logic’ tells us that if the odds are 10,000 to 1, then if we play 10,001 times then we’ll win, but the reality is that the odds are re-set at 50/50 every time. You will either win, or you will lose. There either is, or there isn’t, other sophont life in the universe
This leads me to two conclusions … 1 – if you don’t play (participate) you most certainly won’t ‘win’ … and 2 – humans will always try and ‘game’ the system so the odds ‘will ever be in their favour’, and that other humans will always try to take advantage of them.
Widdershins Worlds 
I like to imagine that we are not alone in the Universe, that somewhere, something is watching our adolescent fumbling…
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Heh, and you know how much adolescents love being watched while they fumble! 😀
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and not just adolescents either!
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Hah 😀 … yeah, that. 😀
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Such wise words, Widders
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I love the places my thought processes lead me. 🙂
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It’s a bit lonely and creepy to think we’re ALONE, but all the more miraculous that we exist at all. Totally mind bending that not just a life form developed, but an infinite variety of life. But we could be wrong to assume that the purpose of the universe is to get life as we know it evolving – perhaps it is perfectly happy swirling around infinitely.
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Well, seeing as those pesky humans are making such a hash of it, that might not be such a bad idea. 🙂
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What an incredible idea: we are the gardeners!
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My brain has a wonderful time coming up with these sorts of thoughts on a regular basis. 😀
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I like it!
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I’m rather fond of it myself. 😀
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I think it would be incredibly sad if we were the only intelligent life in the universe. I don’t want to believe it. There are so many problems humanity creates for itself here, on Earth. Could you imagine what we could do to the universe, if given a chance to f#$% up.
My hope that there is some wise race or five out there, better and smarter than humans, is what sustains me as a reader and writer of science fiction.
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I suspect that IF we ever do get out there, it will only be because we cleaned up our act significantly.
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That a fun speculative journey! I can only imagine the wondrous things humans could accomplish without the ridiculous stick-poking and its waste of time, treasure, and talent. I think there’s probably life all over the universe but suspect there aren’t any other planets with an identical evolutionary past. So we’re probably the only humans… but we could seed other planets if we got our acts together. Wouldn’t that be fun?!
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I love it when I read articles by scientists with their ‘serious faces’ on, positing about life, ‘as we know it’ exists on other planets, or not. Of course it won’t be ‘as we know it’, that’s the whole point of it being on another planet!!! :d
I wouldn’t mind popping back on a few millennia or so, and see how we did. 🙂
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Me too. I don’t think humanity will ever completely wipe itself out, but we can come very close very easily. The world/civilization that regenerates would be fascinating.
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I hope, hope, hope you’re right that we could do such a thing. Though I’ve only seeded with my thoughts and heart and not with human offspring. But my seeds fall heavily on the side of dropping the sticks and seeing what’s out there…together. Keeps me going on many a dark day on earth. And like you, I’d love to pop back and see how we did… Or is that what I’m doing now??
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Heh, you might want to book another visit, in five hundred years or so. 😀
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If I’m crazy enough to try this planet again. 😉
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I don’t think we are alone but it is probably best if we don’t encounter any other species until we get ourselves sorted out. We need a lot more of a Star Trek approach but right now we’d be closer to the bad guys from Avatar or Independence Day.
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Pretty much. 😦
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Hubble images of deep space draw me in like a magnet. Love them!!!! I actually used them as headers on my old blog of 11+ years. … and congratulations on being the first person I’ve ever encountered motivated by the Theory of Phlogiston.
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Hi, Frank. 😀 … they’re the header and background here too. 😀 … I’ve been fascinated by deep space , and the ‘shallow’ space, images from Hubble, and other sources too … since that Phlogiston moment really. 🙂
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A toast for our joys of Hubble space!
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Cheers! 😀
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