Please don’t go about searching for extraterrestrial life!

 

Photo by Miriam Espacio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/two-alien-inside-car-wallpaper-365625/

Just read that NASA is planning to send a $5 billion probe to determine if there is extraterrestrial life on one of Jupiter's moons. Why do we do it? To me, it's like poking a bear in the eye or entering a lion's lair. Things are bad enough on Earth with survival of the fittest determining the success or otherwise of life on the planet. We have a goddamned food chain where the strong prey on the weak in order to thrive.  We can't even figure out corporate stress and here we are sending intergalactic probes and radio signals into deep space. Why do we do it?

Do we have a death wish? (Judging by the way that we are pushing artificial intelligence, it seems that we do.) Nature has endowed many plants, insects and animals with camouflaging ability that lets them merge with their surroundings so that their predators don't notice them. The militaries of the world similarly seek to camouflage their troops and equipment from the prying eyes of the enemy. There is a reason why fifth-generation aircraft need stealth abilities. We humans don't trust each other enough to live in harmony as one species and here we are boldly seeking extraterrestrial life. Why? Are we cuckoo? Do we look forward to enslavement, genocide or extinction? Or are we stupid enough to believe that a benevolent superior civilization will come and help us be like them?

One of the brightest human minds ever, Stephen Hawking, was of the view that searching for extraterrestrial life is a dangerous idea. He likened it to the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World which led to the annihilation of the Native Americans. We don't have the foggiest idea about what extraterrestrial life is like, but if we are to hear from them, it will likely be from a life form that is vastly more advanced than ours for them to be able to communicate with us.

Going by how contact and interaction between a technologically advanced civilized and relatively primitive one has generally panned out in our world, things won't end well for life on Earth as we know it. It is better that we restrict our rendezvous with aliens and extraterrestrials to sci-fi and movies and television series. Logical Mr. Spock?