Will our encounter with alien life change everything?
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| Star-nosed mole. Image by Google |
In 2009, Jonathan Foer in his mind provoking book Eating
Animals wrote: “If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful
and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would
be our argument against being eaten?”
Thought-experiments involving aliens, have been great mental
tools to debate and answer several of the philosophical queries and moral dilemmas
like these. Other similar speculations had heartened us to ask questions such
as “How will religions stand the discovery of aliens?” “What sort of power hierarchies
will emerge once we encountered extraterrestrials as we imagine them?” “What
sort of moral obligations will we have towards our galactic neighbors?” The
possibilities are boundless, but our imagination, as it turns out, not very
much.
We seem to know a lot about alien life, thanks to sci-fi
sensations of 20th century. Sometime gluey eyed monsters, blue,
green, usually with two hands, two feet and a head. How bloody anthropomorphic!
For centuries, we have looked up at sky wondering about the presence of other worlds
and possibly other lives. Put another way, we have done a good job in casting
our own image unto the universe. Our inklings have never left the bounds of our
earthly existence. And why not? Is not everything we have ever dreamed, penned
and painted bears witness? From homo-fictitious to gods and supernatural.
This explains our quirky methods till date to hunt for our
galactic brothers (or rivals). The short-wave radio waves which we hope to
catch as a “sign” from outside world, which SETI has been doing for long. The
biggest assumption being that the alien life must have technology advanced
enough to send radio signals for communication. Too far-fetched? According to
astronomer, Avi Loeb, we might as well search for spectroscopic signatures of
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmospheres of alien planets, in the hopes of
finding fridge-using aliens. Or perhaps hairspray-using ones. And yet others
propose to look for polluting cities, Dyson circles for electricity, nuclear-war
torn planets. Sounds…familiar.
Any attempt at musing on alien life, is in actuality a musing
about us, our own very selves. Our tribalism instinct has drawn our fear of an
invading human-hating monsters. Same could be said about techno-phobias and
artificial intelligences. And so, the philosophical queries and moral dilemmas
reflect our own mental epidemics. We can shot our best guess, that
earth-centric religions will have a very hard time grappling with the alien
find. Most rabbis, imams and popes will be extremely disappointed at the
non-mention of alien life in their holy books. Maybe, Golden Rule works, which
basically states that you should treat others like you want to be treated,
something used a lot in vegan ethics and animal rights arguments. Maybe, there
are other better ways to organize society, than ours’ crude hierarchical ones. For
science, however even finding a bacteria will be revolutionary. Any rudimentary
form of life, will change everything. Maybe, that life form is so unfamiliar that
we won’t be able to recognize it as life at all. And maybe, we do happen to find legged and armed
species, because in the course of earthling’s evolution, locomotion devices
such as arms and legs have appeared and evolved separately and independently
quite a times. Or maybe, we have been wrong all along and we should focus on finding other species on earth, which to our awe and even astonishment can be deemed as 'aliens' themselves. Nevertheless, whatever the case, it will be the ultimate test
for our scientific understanding.
And so maybe, we should keep our fingers crossed and till
then, let our imagination venture far.
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