If We Are Not Alone, What Would They Make of Us?
Author’s note: This piece began as a conversation with ChatGPT. What followed was a surprisingly thoughtful exchange about humanity, values, civilisation and what it might mean to be ready for contact with something beyond ourselves. I’ve shaped the ideas in my own voice, but the conversation itself deserves some credit.
Let us entertain a proposition.
We are not alone.
Not necessarily little green men landing on the White House lawn.
Perhaps intelligent life exists elsewhere in the galaxy. Perhaps it is far more advanced than we are. Perhaps some civilisation has already lived through the technological adolescence we seem to be experiencing now.
And perhaps, somewhere, we are being observed.
That leads to a question I find rather more interesting than whether UFOs are real.
What would they make of us?
Looking at humanity from the outside
Imagine trying to describe the human race without being human.
We are extraordinarily clever.
We can split the atom, map the genome, photograph a black hole and send machines beyond the edge of our solar system.
We write symphonies. Paint pictures. Fall in love. Tell jokes. Build cathedrals. Care for complete strangers.
And occasionally we display astonishing courage and generosity.
Then, almost without blinking, we go to war over borders, beliefs, resources and ideas.
We poison rivers while discussing environmental responsibility.
We create technologies designed to connect us and then use them to make ourselves lonely, angry and distracted.
We produce enough food to feed enormous populations while others go hungry.
We have access to more knowledge than any previous generation in history, yet misinformation can still travel around the planet before truth has put its trousers on.
From the outside, I suspect we might look rather like adolescents.
Brilliant.
Creative.
Emotional.
Impulsive.
Occasionally magnificent.
Occasionally completely bloody ridiculous.
Technologically advanced. Emotionally adolescent.
This is where science fiction gets interesting.
In Star Trek there is the idea of the Prime Directive.
An advanced civilisation should not interfere with a less developed civilisation until it has reached a certain level of maturity.
Usually the benchmark is technological.
Warp drive.
The moment a species can travel beyond its own solar system, it becomes part of a larger community.
But perhaps technology is the wrong measure.
Because a civilisation can become technically powerful long before it becomes emotionally mature.
Human beings already possess weapons capable of destroying entire cities.
Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly.
Biotechnology is advancing.
Space exploration is accelerating.
Our tools are becoming enormously powerful.
The question is whether our wisdom is developing at the same speed.
I am not entirely convinced it is.
What would make us ready?
If some hypothetical federation of advanced civilisations existed, I doubt they would simply ask whether we could build a fast spaceship.
They might ask more uncomfortable questions.
Can this species cooperate beyond its tribes?
Can it resolve conflict without immediately reaching for violence?
Can it tolerate radically different beliefs?
Can it distinguish truth from propaganda?
Can it use powerful technology without allowing that technology to dominate it?
Can it think beyond the next election, the next quarterly report or the next generation?
Can it care for its children?
Can it care for its planet?
Can it disagree without hatred?
Can it encounter something fundamentally different without immediately trying to conquer it, convert it, exploit it or monetise it?
Those might be the real entrance exams.
Why our values are not universal
One thing that came out of this conversation was the question of values.
Ideas such as dignity, fairness, freedom, compassion, responsibility and truth sound almost universal.
Yet human societies interpret them very differently.
One culture may place individual freedom above almost everything else.
Another may place duty to the family or community first.
One society values tradition.
Another values disruption.
One prizes loyalty.
Another prizes individual expression.
And then history gets involved.
War.
Religion.
Geography.
Scarcity.
Empire.
Trauma.
All of these things shape what societies learn to fear and what they learn to protect.
Perhaps our values are not completely different after all.
Perhaps we simply rank them differently.
And that ranking creates enormous conflict.
The gardener, not the Messiah
At one point I asked what an artificial intelligence might change if it somehow became responsible for the survival of humanity.
The answer surprised me.
It was not about control.
It was about creating better conditions.
Better education.
Better incentives.
Better preventative health.
Better care for children.
More long-term thinking.
More protection against technologies capable of causing harm at enormous scale.
And less obsession with controlling human behaviour.
The phrase that stayed with me was:
Less Messiah. More gardener.
I rather like that.
A gardener does not shout at a plant to grow.
He does not micromanage every leaf.
He tends the soil.
He gives it light.
Water.
Space.
Protection when necessary.
And then he lets the thing become what it is capable of becoming.
Perhaps civilisation works the same way.
Surviving is not the same as thriving
There is another distinction worth making.
Survival is not enough.
A civilisation could technically survive while becoming frightened, controlled, joyless and stagnant.
We could keep everyone alive inside a perfectly efficient machine and still lose something essential about being human.
Thriving is different.
Thriving is where curiosity lives.
Art.
Humour.
Love.
Risk.
Discovery.
Friendship.
Argument.
Beauty.
Meaning.
Those things are inefficient.
They are also rather important.
A civilisation worth preserving must be more than simply difficult to kill.
It must be worth living in.
So, are we ready for first contact?
Probably not.
At least not yet.
If an advanced civilisation were observing Earth today, I suspect the report might read something like this:
Promising species.
Extraordinary creativity.
Rapid technological development.
Strong capacity for cooperation and compassion.
Also highly tribal, emotionally volatile and frequently distracted by nonsense.
Continue observation.
Do not hand over the keys.
And perhaps that would be fair.
Because humanity is not simply good or bad.
We are unfinished.
We are capable of extraordinary tenderness and extraordinary brutality.
Sometimes within the same afternoon.
Maybe that is what they would see
If we really are being watched, I hope whoever is watching us is patient.
I hope they notice the wars.
But also the people pulling strangers from rubble.
I hope they notice the greed.
But also the generosity.
I hope they notice our extraordinary talent for making a mess.
But also our equally extraordinary ability to repair things.
Perhaps an advanced civilisation would not judge us by our worst moments.
Perhaps they would judge us by the direction in which we are travelling.
That may ultimately be the more interesting question.
Not whether aliens exist.
Not whether they have visited.
Not whether governments know something we do not.
But this:
If humanity eventually meets something wiser than itself, what kind of civilisation do we want to be when we introduce ourselves?
Personally, I think we still have some gardening to do.