Extraterrestrial Intelligence - Not

With the continuing Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI for short) looking more and more like a Miami Dolphin game we should start facing up to an ugly possibility. Maybe we're the oldest and wisest civilization around. The idea gives me the Willies too, but at some point we're going to have to suck it up and act accordingly.

I realize how difficult it is to pry humans away from the notion that a race of huge-brained aliens will land on earth and explain the great mysteries of life to us. We'd want to know why we're here, what the meaning of life is, if there is a God (and why He hates the Chicago Cubs) and which horse will win the 6th race at Aquaduct next Monday. But we keep coming up empty and should face up to the evidence that all this bupkis is a clear sign we're alone out there. Maybe there are no wise aliens or even Brain-Eating Monsters. We could be it.

The most promising evidence for creatures from Outer Space remains the Roswell incident, and that isn't very hopeful. Think about it. A Flying Saucer navigated past black hokes, meteor swarms, super novas, comets and gamma rays only to crash after getting tangled up in some telephone wires. That doesn't sound very intelligent to me. I'd actually be embarassed to have creatures like that eat my brain. And since that seems to be it, we've got some decisions to make.

We should start planning now for the possibility that the other races out there are like a kid brother. I'm not suggesting we knock them down, sit on their face and fart, but we ought to prepare for the eventuality. The good stuff is obvious, but only makes up a fraction of what we are. For every Mozart there's more than one Hank Williams Jr., and for every Acropolis, St. Sophia, Sphinx, Taj Mahal and Hanging Garden of Babylom there are dozens of NASCAR tracks. And how do we explain that statue of Rocky we've got in Philly?

So do what do we let on about this? Do we tell them about the Three Stooges, and Cop Rock or drift around in long robes like we're wise and peaceful beings and show pictures of Mahatma Ghandi? Are we going to act kind and benevolent or let them watch Arnold Schwarzenegger movies? What about hockey?

These are critical decisions and we have to work on them now, before we encounter these beings. Because I tell you, if they ever find out the truth about humans it may actually trigger that brain eating we've all read about.

In the meantime...WATCH THE SKIES!!!