What would an outsider think of us?
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Had a, mildly heated discussion along similar lines with a pleasant but 'know-all' guy in the gym today. The thrust of my argument was that the human race is made up of people with great characteristic variances. Even as a young teenager I was always pleased to see the completion of a new building which enhanced the district in which I lived and felt proud of local people who invented or introduced products, such as the portable defibrillator, which enriched and/or extended the lives of people. Throughout history there has always been constructive people of high moral character and those of a destructive, amoral/immoral nature. Most people and that probably includes me, falling somewhere in between. The evil that was Nazism engulfed the whole of Germany and we all know the horrific results of that. On the other side of the coin to that we had the Americans who defeated the Nazi plague and provided massive amounts of money to help their former enemy as well as those European countries which were devastated by WW2 to rebuild their war ravaged nations. The good guys came out on top. Maybe some day it won't work out like that. I'm sure if the aliens, to whom you refer, were sufficiently clever to travel from their home Planet to Planet Earth they would be able to observe and understand the diversity of human nature and the constant conflict between virtue and evil. I'd like to agree. Someone said something once which stuck with me. No matter how much bad you see going on, look for the helpers. The people who rally together to help others in need or rally to fight for what's right. I think as long as we see those people....or are those people....we still have hope. I think they would be absolutely disgusted. In my experience people tend to be apathetic and self serving. They're all afraid of death and try to justify it or rationalize it by being vicious and telling themselves they have control because of it. The most mess up thing? They do in fact have control. People see that by being vicious they can gain more and people jump on this like a horny dog. They can't help themselves. They are too weak minded to accept anything that doesn't give them power or at least an idea of power. Of course this isn't everyone but a pretty large portion. I'd also say it's more common in the U.S. Capitalism really fucks people into thinking in terms of social darwinism where there are winners and losers. So what would outsiders think? They would think "We're not getting anywhere near these toxic beings who hate just to hate. They can kill themselves among-st themselves and it is so unfortunate for the people live on that planet with good intentions. They will be out shined by people who stepped on them." I believe that aliens would think of us a powerful race, full of corrupt dictators, with dysfunctional communities and governments. They would see how much we have polluted our planet from since we had came to be and they would be horrified, unless the aliens are furious war mongers. The aliens would be impressed with our capacity to create new technologies and empires but they would be scared of how quickly we could take them down. 1
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What is so interesting about our modern society is that if it were objectively looked at from an outside perspective, it would appear as though the average human is much more knowledgeable/intelligent/reasonable then we actually are. Really, we are all piggy-backing off of an extreme minority of people and most of those "piggy-backing" are not even cognizant of this dynamic (i.e. they never even think about it, they basically think it is magic and take it for granted-- Since most people don't recognize what goes into making a society such as ours function and do not understand who is responsible for all of the "toys" and how it was achieved, they naturally look elsewhere for "importance"/"value". However, I 100% guarantee you if the 1 million top technical researchers/developers/ect. were removed from Earth today, reality would hit the rest of humanity in the face hard as sh't real quick (it wouldn't even take the top 1 million, it is much more like the top 100,000 or so--or less) and would be forced to recognize how incredibly fragile our system since people are trained that it is okay for them to have the worldview of any other Mammal while simultaneously basing society around technology that fundamentally requires a much higher level of knowledge/intelligence to operate/maintain properly/continue progressing. This is all to say, the aliens you refer to May potentially be somewhat impressed by our tech. advancement, but this is very skewed indeed since it is the product of well less than even 1% (it's closer to .1%) of people and goes a long way to explaining the incongruity between our Scientific & Technological Advancement next to our rather primitive behavior patterns. I agree, we are essentially piggy backing off other's achievements and claiming we invented it. Let me expand that statement in case I was off course from what you stated. Currently we are consistently amazed and surprised when new discoveries of ancient civilizations have been found to have invented things we thought we were the first to. Such as batteries. The technology was lost, due to war, famine, fire, etc...and it takes us many centuries to replace or find the knowledge again. There are catastrophes in the past that has set human advancement back generations upon generations, so I agree that our current society is very fragile but unless we actually think about it we just don't realize how much. A much cruder example of your observation would be to simply point out the attention paid to college football vs. the attention paid to actual academic achievement. In the University I work at people are amazed that I don't follow our football team as if sports is the only reason this place exists. They can tell me everything about the team, the players, the scores....but they look very confused when I tell them of multiple departments developments in technology and their progression in health and agriculture. @Mint_tea I agree, we are essentially piggy backing off other's achievements and claiming we invented it. Lol Yes, I think you are correct about that. A much cruder example of your observation would be to simply point out the attention paid to college football vs. the attention paid to actual academic achievement. In the University I work at people are amazed that I don't follow our football team as if sports is the only reason this place exists. They can tell me everything about the team, the players, the scores....but they look very confused when I tell them of multiple departments developments in technology and their progression in health and agriculture Yes, exactly (Side note: I actually recently used this example on CD to demonstrate the exact point you are making). This resonates with me deeply, as this sort of thing happens to me quite frequently as well. Currently, I'm in my mid-twenties, finishing up my undergrad (Note, I have discussed my background in further depth elsewhere on CD). I get this all the time as well, which I always can't help but smh (and chuckle a bit) when I try to politely explain to them I don't follow sports, and am not concerned with what is going on in "sports world" but am rather much more interested in what is going on in academia and elsewhere. Also, I was a Security Guard for several years and I always found the High School sporting events mind-boggling. The kids (i.e. High Schoolers) would come out to rap music blasting with obscene lyrics (e.g. here is a link to a song that used to be highly popular (I apologize in advance for subjecting you to this, it is rather informative as to the kind of mind-space the kids are being brought up into--if you are not already familiar with it, that is): https://www.youtube.com/ Meanwhile, the adults were overwhelmingly encouraged it, and I was put in the position of knowing that these kids were essentially being so misled by their parents/adults in their life/ect. that they were being deprived of intellectualism (by design--although the adults may not/probably aren't cognizant of it) and what I can only describe as the psychological abuse of the young. This put me in quite a difficult ethical situation (from my perspective) since my job was to enforce/maintain the system and thus the status quo (which needs to be fundamentally reformed) however if I didn't do it, then I wouldn't be able to pay for rent, college fees, ect. ect. This has been a bit of a digression on my end however it goes to show that there are very few "bastions" that are not effected by the attitudes of the Majority (i.e. even the University system that is ostensibly designed to progress Humanity through the power of reasoned pursuits is not at all immune to this type of harmful "mind-space" vitiating it) 0
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If I were reading this book at a library or from a friend (or free anyway) (I read most of my books for free, so that's quite likely), and it were the first line, I'd remove it from my possession. Judging from its description, it doesn't sound like something I'd buy myself, but I would put it in an "abandoned" shelf in that case. Why would aliens think about whether we are beautiful or monsters? Why would they even have such notions, and that too, like humans? It's just annoying with that. Lol, don't judge the book based off this quote alone, it's actually a fun read if you like Sci-fi. It's basically saying, our creations, our imagination and what we are capable of can be beautiful. But our actions against each other can make us monsters. At least that is my interpretation of it. We are capable of greatness, what we do doesn't always speak to that though. 1
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I do read sci-fi sometimes, but I'm generally critical of such statements. Yes, that's a fine interpretation, but including a random notion of aliens is annoying. I might be less critical for something like a movie, though, because I don't expect them to be correct - probably not so much even then for documentaries and such. 1
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